One Night
by MutantMj23
Summary: It may be safe to say that Daniella Giorgianno was having the worst night of her life when the Turtles saved her, but who knew that things could actually get worse? And what sadistic plan did Shredder have in store for them all? They only knew one thing sure: It had taken one night to change everything, and now they only had one night to keep things from getting even worse. OC
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.

One Night

by MutantMj23

1

The lights of the dingy corner store flickered momentarily as the storm raged outside and thunder boomed overhead. I sighed as, for a split second, the store was engulfed in total darkness. Then the light was back and I resumed my search heedlessly. What had I come in here for?

"Hey, girly!" the obese, greasy-haired man behind the counter barked at me. "Either buy something or get the hell out."

Oh, right, that's what. I smiled as I grabbed a loaf of bread off the shelf. "You should be more polite," I said, walking to the counter. "You need the business."

It was true. I was the only person in the shop and the goods on the shelves looked like they hadn't been touched in years.

The store owner ignored me as I threw the bread on the counter. He rang it up and asked simply, "Anything else?"

"Nope," I said, grabbing my wallet out of my coat pocket.

"Alright then," the owner said. "Your total comes to $4.56."

I scoffed as I pulled a five-dollar bill out of my wallet. "That better be some good bread."

"Don't like it, don't shop here," the owner said, snatching the bill away from me.

"Whatever." I grabbed the bread off the counter and turned to leave without waiting for my change or receipt.

As I pulled open the door of the shop, the owner called out to me. "Hey, kid, be careful out there. That's one hell of a storm."

I smiled as thunder boomed once again. Only in New York. "Thanks," I said, pulling my hood up and stepping outside.

I pulled my keys out of my pocket and turned on the mini flashlight that dangled from them, praying the storm would end by the time I got home.

* * *

Five minutes later, I was back at my dad's loft, drenched. The loft was warm. It smelled of leather and must. Books covered nearly every inch of floorspace of the small, square living room. There were two bedrooms in the very back, opposite the only restroom in the place and one of them was mine. Until about a month ago, though, I'd only had use it during the summers.

My dad stood in the kitchen, which was opposite the living room, lighting what seemed to be about a million candles. He had closely cropped, graying brown hair, hazel eyes and wore thin wire-rimmed glasses. Next to him stood his tall, thin ginger-haired girlfriend – AKA the woman who had destroyed our family.

"Hey, Dani," Camille smiled at me brightly, her voice brimming with false sweetness. "Did you enjoy the storm?"

I bit my tongue to keep from saying something snarky. Instead, I forced myself to smile at her. "It was lovely, Camille. Just lovely."

Lightning flashed across the sky outside.

"Did you get the bread we sent you out for?" Dad intervened quickly.

"Yeah." I crossed the living room, stepping over books carefully as I went, and set the bread down on the table in the equally small, rectangular kitchen. I moved some of the candles off the table and set them on the granite counter-top beside the sink. Then I sat down at the table. "What's with all the candles?" I gestured to the ones I'd left untouched.

"In case the power goes out," Dad said.

I nodded as I watched Camille grab the bread off the table. I knew it wasn't the kind she'd asked me for. The corner store didn't carry the good, Italian kind she had wanted. "Dani," she said, sighing. "I asked for Italian because we're having spaghetti for dinner." Irritation was creeping into her voice as she spoke.

"What, is this the wrong kind?" Dad took the bread from her.

"Yes," Camille said, moving over to the stove to stir the pasta. "And it went bad two days ago. We can't even use it."

"Daniella." Dad turned to me. "Where did you get this?" He threw the bread down on the table carelessly, knocking over a large bottle of wine as he did so.

I watched the red liquid pour out of the bottle and flood the table in disgust. To avoid getting any of it on me, I pushed my chair away from the table. I looked up at my dad as Camille rushed over to clean up the mess with a washcloth. "I got it from the corner store down the street."

"Why the hell would you go there?" Dad said, ignoring the fact that a highly flammable liquid had engulfed his candle-lit kitchen table. "The fat jackass who runs that place can't be trusted – you know that."

"He's fine, Dad," I said, shaking my head. "Honestly, the store is fine and I went there because everything else is closed because of the storm. It was the only place open."

"Yeah, except for the supermarket," Dad scoffed. "You should have just gone there like we told you to."

I groaned loudly. "The supermarket is two streets over and you wanted me to walk there – in this!" I gestured to the rain-streaked windows.

This time it was Camille's turn to interject. She stood at the sink, wringing out her washcloth, her face a stony mask and her voice angry. "If you had just gone after school like we had asked you to, you could have avoided the storm and we wouldn't even be having this conversation."

"I had track try-outs after school," I reminded her quickly. "I had to take the late bus and it was already storming by the time I got home."

"It doesn't matter!" Camille said, her voice rising to an angry shriek. She turned to face me, panting heavily the way she always did when she got angry. "We asked you to do it, so you should have done it."

"Look, I'm sorry," I said, "but I have other things to worry about other than your guys' stupid diner date – I need extracurriculars for college." Which was honestly something I had never given much thought to before, but before I hadn't cared about going. Now I did.

Camille moved across the kitchen to stand in front of me, her face an emotionless mask. "Get up," she said firmly.

I scoffed. As if I was about to take orders from her.

"Just do as she says, Dani," Dad said with a sigh from his spot in the corner of the room.

I glanced at him. He looked stressed but serious like he was being forced to deal with something he didn't want to do, even though he knew it had to be done. I wondered what it was.

I stood up silently without looking at Camille. Then before I knew what was happening, she had reached out and slapped me across the face. Hard.

I stumbled backwards and tripped over a pile of books. I stared up at her in disbelief. She had never hit me before. She didn't even believe in violence.

Camille stared down at me as tears brimmed at her eyes. "Thank you for ruining my engagement party." She turned and ran to my father's bedroom, closing the door behind her.

I looked up at Dad, who sighed and shook his head. "You're just going to have learn, Dani," he said, "to treat her with respect. She is your mother, after all."

I stared at him, gaping now. What did he just say?

He sighed again as lightning flashed by the window of the living room and looked down at me. It was then that I realized it: I was the thing that needed to dealt with.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.

2

Dad turned and walked to his bedroom where Camille could be heard sobbing hysterically. I watched him go inside and close the door behind him, my mind still processing everything that happened. My mother...?

I got to my feet silently, crossed the living room, and left the loft. Camille was _not _my mother and she never would be, no matter what happened.

* * *

Outside, the storm continued to rage. The streets were flooded with rain water and the storm drains were clogged with the fallen leaves. There weren't very many people outside and even fewer cars. Thunder sounded and I watched silently, as the wind blew a garbage can into what little oncoming traffic there was, spewing garbage into the street as it went.

At the end of the street there was a small crowd of people piling into the waiting bus. I ran down the street and joined the queue silently. As I stood in line, a thought entered my mind: They were engaged. That meant they were getting married.

I climbed up the steps of the bus just as the door was starting to close. I reached out and wrenched it open as lightning flashed overhead. I stepped inside the bus and handed over whatever change was in my pocket to the driver. He smiled at me without counting the change. "Welcome aboard."

I nodded my thanks as I turned away from him. The bus was unusually crowded for a day like today – stormy, dark, and miserable, that is. Didn't people usually stay inside on days like this?

Maybe they were just like me – trying to get out of the rain. And away from everything else.

I set my sights on an empty seat in the very back of the bus, away from all the other passengers. I walked over to it, ignoring the crazed looks I got from a couple of homeless people who looked like they'd been struck by lightning and collapsed in the seat silently. I pressed my face against the cool glass of the window with a sigh.

They were getting married, but why now? Why so soon?

Just when it seemed like the bus had finally started moving, it stopped again. A lot of people got off. A few got on. A giant bald man decorated in tattoos sat down beside me. He seemed to have a million tattoos, but the one that stood out the most was one of a dragon that curled up and around his arm.

Not only were they getting married, but Camille had hit me. She had actually hit me – and after all that garbage about not believing in violence and how bad corporal punishment was for children. Mom would freak if she knew. Mom...

Suddenly, I felt exhausted and not just because of what had happened tonight. Because of the stress of changing schools_ and _towns. Because of trying to maintain a good relationship with Camille when it was obvious neither of us actually wanted one, not that that was new or anything. I had hated her ever since I had met her when I was seven years old. I was fifteen now.

It was also because I had to adjust now to my life with Dad and we had never exactly been close, so it wasn't easy. And now I had everything tonight to worry about. What if Camille kept hitting me?

What if they got married and it worse?

Mom would kill Dad if she knew. Then she'd kill Camille, too. Why did I have to be here with them?

Why couldn't I be there with her – with Mom?

Lightning flashed again and this time, I caught sight of my reflection in the window. I had long, billowy black hair, a heart-shaped face with big round brown eyes, and olive-colored skin. People were always telling me how I looked just like my mother – thank God I didn't look a thing like my father.

"Hey, where are you going?" the tattoo man sitting next to me asked.

"Huh?" I looked up at him, surprised. Where _was_ I going – where did this bus even go? I had never been on it before. I had no idea where I was going.

"You don't where you going, do you?" the man said, laughing.

Was it that obvious I had only been in New York for a month? Whatever. I was too exhausted to care.

I shrugged and pressed my face against the window, listening to the soothing pitter-patter of rain against the glass. "I'm going wherever I want," I said, allowing the rhythmic starting and stopping of the bus to rock me back and forth.

And it was true, too. I would go wherever felt right, but right now, that was nowhere in New York. It was with my mother.

Too bad I couldn't be with her anymore.

* * *

"Hey – hey, girl, wake up!"

I woke up to see the elderly bus driver and the tattooed man standing over me. I yawned and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. "What time is it?" I asked. "What happened?"

"You fell asleep," the bus driver told me. "This is the last stop, so it's time for you get off. Do you know where you're going?" He looked worried now.

"It's alright, old man," the tattooed guy said. "She's with me. Come on, I'll help you find your way." He looked at the bus driver. "She's new in town."

The bus driver nodded and went back to the front of the bus.

I sat for a moment, watching the tattooed guy turn to leave. Then I stood up and followed him. It's not like I had anything better to do.

Not that I could think of anyway.

The storm had finally ended, but the wind was bitingly cold now and the neighborhood seemed questionable. There was nothing but a bunch of rundown shops, some warehouses, and a lot of people who seemed to be mostly adults and teenagers. There weren't any families or children anywhere. I decided to stay close to the tattooed stranger. I may not have known him, but he said he'd help me and what other choice did I have?

It's not like I knew my way home or anything.

"You got a name?" the guy asked me, causing me to jump.

"Oh, um, yeah," I said, trying my best to smile at him, but my mind was cloudy with sleep and I still wasn't in a very good mood. "My name is Dani – er Daniella."

"Nice," the guy said as I followed him across the street and down a dirty, garbage-strewn alley. "You can call me Luke – Luke Skywalker."

I raised my eyebrows at him as we rounded a corner to another street. Luke Skywalker – wasn't that a character in a movie or something?

Whatever. He was already helping me. I wasn't about to press him for info.

"So you look like you could use a drink," Luke said as we passed a run-down warehouse with a group teenagers outside, getting high.

I tore my eyes away from the teenagers and looked up at Luke. "Um, yeah," I said, trying to be polite. "Maybe just some water if that's okay." I wondered vaguely if he could tell that I was underage.

"Alright," Luke said, laughing. "Water it is."

We turned another corner and came face to face with a small shack of a bar with neon sign flashing in the window. The sign read Bar None and the parking lot was filled with motorcycles and broken down cars. I looked at Luke uncertainly. "I don't think I'm allowed in there."

"For a drink of water?" Luke said, smiling at me. "Of course you are. Come on."

"Okay," I said, following him, "but only water."

Once I was inside the bar, I felt completely awake. Loud rock music blasted from the stereo and it was filled with people covered in tattoos and piercings. The bartender didn't even card me when I walked in.

"Go sit over there," Luke said, pointing to an empty booth in the corner of the bar beneath a Budweiser sign.

I nodded and went to sit down.

It was then that it occurred to me that I should check my cell phone. I tapped my pockets quickly, checking to see if I even still had my phone – and everything else. I pulled out my keys, my wallet, and last, my cell phone. I sighed, relieved, as I tapped the touch screen. It was a little past nine and I had zero missed calls.

Looks like Dad wasn't worried about me.

"What're you doing with that thing?"

I looked up to see Luke standing over me, holding two mugs – one filled with beer and one filled with the water I'd asked for. "Nothing," I said, putting the phone away. "Just checking the time. I was afraid it might have gotten lifted on the bus." I laughed nervously as he sat down. "Is that my water?"

"Yep," Luke said, setting the cup in front of me.

"Thanks." I brought the cup to my lips, tuck a sip, and nearly spit it all out. The water was warm and burned the back of my throat as I swallowed. I looked up at Luke, coughing loudly. "What kind of water is this?"

He took a sip of his beer. "The only kind of water they've got here – tap water. If it tastes funny, it's because of the chemicals the city uses to purify it."

"Chemicals?" I raised my eyebrows at him.

"Yeah." Luke nodded and took another sip of his drink. "It keeps all the bacteria and shit out of the water to keep people from getting sick."

"Oh," I said, nodding.

When I had lived with my mother, I never drank tap water. She always bought fancy bottled water instead because it was cleaner. This must have been what she meant by that.

I took another sip of the water as the thought of my mother flooded my mind. Sometimes I wished I could forget her.

"You okay?" Luke asked, breaking my train of thought.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, trying to smile at him.

Luke nodded and I drank more of my water silently.

* * *

I wasn't sure if hours or minutes had passed by the time our booth was filled with Luke's rowdy friends. Most of them were men, but there were a couple women there, too, and a girl who looked to be about my age or maybe a little older. I didn't care who they were, though – they were all hilarious and really nice, too.

I had drank five or six cups of water and I had lost count of how many beers Luke had drank. The music was blasting now and everyone in the bar seemed to be in a better mood. I even felt better. I definitely felt happier. I could laugh about anything now.

I didn't even care about my dad or Camille anymore. They were assholes. Who needed them?

As we were all laughing at a joke one of Luke's friends had just finished, a thin blond boy appeared beside me. He was a lot younger than everyone else in the bar – except for me – and was dressed in a polo and blue jeans. He looked like a lost college student, honestly. He smiled at me and opened his mouth to speak, but it was at that exact moment that Luke got to his feet and said, "Hey, come one, we've gotta get Dani home."

I shrugged at the blond boy and followed Luke out of the bar with a few of his guy friends, following close behind us. "Who was that guy?" I asked as we left. The words felt funny as they fell out of my mouth – like my tongue was tripping over them.

"Nobody," Luke said as we walked down a long, deserted street I didn't recognize. "He's nobody, Dani."

"Nobody important, anyway," I joked, following after him and his friends.

We turned down a thin, long alley I didn't remember from before and then another. And another. Were we in a different neighborhood?

How many minutes had passed – how long had we been walking?

I pulled my cell phone out to check, but as I did so, Luke reached out and snatched the phone out of my hand. I looked up at him confused.

"You know," Luke said, examining the phone before he tossed to one of his friends. "You owe me for all those drinks I bought you."

"Oh, my god," I said, laughing. "You're totally right." I reached in my pocket and took out my wallet.

Luke took it from me before I could even get it open. "Thanks," he said, pocketing it, "but that's not what I meant."

I stopped laughing as he leaned in close to me. "Not what you –?" I was beginning to feel scared now.

Without thinking, I reached out and hit him hard in the face. I turned to run down the alley, knowing I hadn't done any damage, but one of his friends had me in an instant. He slammed my head against the wall of the alley and I fell to the ground as I felt a thin trickle of blood run down my forehead. I tried to get up, but my vision was blurry and the guy kicked me hard in the stomach and I fell again.

"Stupid slut!" Luke screamed, walking over a dumpster at the end of the alley and grabbing something that looked like a two-by-four. "After everything I did for you tonight, this is how you treat me?"

I dug my keys out of my pocket with shaking hands and found the silver attack whistle that hung next to my house keys. I brought it to my lips and blew hard, grateful to hear the high, ringing sound that escaped from it, but as I did so, the guy who had attacked me before knocked it out of my hand. He and another guy grabbed me by my arms and dragged me to the end of the alley where Luke was.

There were three other guys there other than the two who were holding me and Luke. I was down for. I was doomed and I knew it. I had walked right it into a trap not once but twice tonight – once with my father and Camille, then again with Luke.

I didn't care, though. I felt tired all over again – from the pain in my skull and the mystery water Luke had given me earlier. I wanted to be dead. I deserved to be dead. I had walked right into this, after all.

Luke brought the two-by-four down hard on my head and I felt more blood running down the back of my neck. The sound of his friends laughter rang in my ears as he raised it again and brought it down on my back and I fell to the ground. But there was something else.

Something I couldn't see because my vision was too blurry now and there was blood in my eyes, but it sounded like a dull thud – like something falling or landing. Then I heard the sound of running footsteps on the concrete as Luke raised the two-by-four again, but this time, it never made contact.

There was a lot of screaming and yelling and it took me a minute to realize I was listening to the sounds of a fight. But I couldn't tell who was fighting or who was winning.

I fell to the ground as the guys had been holding me released me and I heard Luke yelling at them. Then they were gone along with the others and their voices were replaced by four new ones. Standing over me were four boys – at least, I thought they were boys, they looked strange to me even with my blurred vision. Was their skin green or were they just dressed in all green?

The thing that stood out the most about them was that they were all wearing masks that stood out vibrantly because of how bright the colors were – red, blue, orange, and purple. The one in the red stood over me now on his own, his face swimming in and out of my vision – was he even human? He looked so strange he could have been an alien.

"Hey," he said. "We heard your attack whistle. What are you doing here – don't you know it's dangerous?"

"Danger–?" I repeated, trying to get the word out of my mouth, but I kept fumbling over it. Was I in a dangerous place? "Dangerous." I said the word at last. "Where am I?"

He shook his head and turned back to the one in the blue. I blinked as the one in the purple mask moved over to me now. He reached out and touched the wounds on my head with his strange hands – did he only have three fingers? Why was that?

"She's doesn't even realize she's right in the middle of gang territory, Leo," I heard the one in the red mask say. "It seems like those thugs must have tricked her."

"She's hurt bad, too," the one in purple said as he continued to examine my wounds. I wanted to tell him to go away, but I was too tired – my head hurt _so _much. He looked down at me with brown eyes. "Do you know your name?"

"D-Dani," I said, not even bothering to tell him my full name. I doubted I could even pronounce it right because I was such a mess.

"Why are you asking her questions, Donnie?" I heard the one in the orange ask.

"I checking to see if she has a concussion," the purple one told him in an undertone. Then he turned back to me. "Do you know the date?"

"Date?" I repeated. I never kept track of the date. That's what school was for. I thought hard, trying to remember. "October 2013." The words sounded funny as they left my mouth and I laughed at that.

I don't know why, but I was glad I could still laugh, even though I was on the ground, bleeding and surrounded by strangers. The purple one asked me another question, but I couldn't understand what he said. It sounded like gibberish as it left his mouth and I laughed at that, too.

Then I heard what I thought was arguing as the orange one moved into my line of vision and it was then I decided: I didn't care if these guys were human. They had saved me.

Or had they?


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.

A/N: I took some creative liberties with some of the little things in this chapter because I sort of felt like I had to play a game of "Fill In the Blank" because of the some of the smaller details and things that were left out of the actual show.  
I also tried to add some some references to the previous Turtleverses such as the 2003 series and the movies and stuff.  
Enjoy!

3

"I still don't understand why we had to bring her here."

"She had no ID and we never got her last name. What else were we supposed to do?"

"I don't know – maybe bring her to hospital. You know, where doctors do that thing where they help injured people get better."

"So we could end up on hospital surveillance cameras – great idea, Raph."

Voices. The sound of muffled voices. I recognized them vaguely, even though I had no idea who they belonged to. Why were they arguing – and who was "her"?

Was it possible they meant me?

How long had I been out for – when I did pass out, for that matter?

My head felt funny, aside from the pounding pain I could feel coursing through it. It felt like it was too heavy or something. I reached out to touch it with my hand and I realized that I had not only stopped bleeding, but someone had taken the time to bandage my wound. Who, though – those people who were arguing?

It must have been. I hadn't seen Dad since the fight. How long ago was that?

The voices I had heard earlier were quieter now. I could just barely hear them whispering, but I couldn't make out what was being said. I wanted to know what was being said and to find out who they were.

Except, I realized, I already knew that. They were the ones who had saved me. They must have been.

Or, at least, they were the ones who had beaten the snot out of Luke and his friends. I wanted to thank them.

Slowly, I forced myself to open my eyes and sit up. My vision was no longer blurry, but it was still hard to see due to the semi-darkness of the room I was in. I was in what seemed to be a deserted underground subway station that had been converted into an apartment of some sort. From where I was on a beat up, red sofa I could see a kitchen and a room with paper sliding doors that had been decorated with Asian ink paintings. Directly in front of me was a small television that looked like it had been rescued from the mid-90s and a tire swing hung nearby over a shallow, murky brown river that carved its way through the place.

Where the hell was I?

As I stood up slowly, the sounds of a metallic crash echoed throughout the place and then I could hear more people arguing. Two of the voices sounded vaguely familiar, but I'd never heard the last one before in my life.

Moving slowly, so I wouldn't agitate my injury, I walked over to the room with the sliding doors. That was where the whispering was coming from, but it was still too quiet for me to hear. As I opened the doors, the whispering stopped and I froze when I saw what was inside.

In the middle of the room on a raised platform with a tree growing out of it surrounded by weapons and armor were two, gigantic weapon-wielding turtles. One was slightly taller than the other and wore a blue mask. He had hazel eyes and a set of twin swords strapped to the back of his shell. The other was shorter and stockier and appeared to be the stronger of two. This one had bright green eyes and a set of something that looked like miniature pitchforks strapped to his belt.

For a split second, we stood gaping at each other in stunned silence. Then a scream escaped my throat as the two giant turtles rushed towards me. I moved backwards, half-running, half-walking before I turned and ran. But I had no idea where I was running to and less than two seconds later I ran into something and fell on the ground.

I looked up. I wanted to scream again, but instead all that came out was unintelligible whimper as I stared up at the nearly seven-foot tall brown and white rat that stood in front of me. He was dressed in a red robe and carrying a wooden walking stick with a jade topper. Standing several feet away behind the rat, I could see two more turtles. One was taller and a bit gangly with some sort of staff strapped his shell. He had brown eyes and wore a purple mask. The last turtle was arguably the smallest of the four with an orange mask, blue eyes, and a set of nunchucks hanging off his belt.

"Please," the rat said, stunning me with its ability to actually speak. "I must ask you to calm yourself –"

"C-calm?" I said, vaguely aware of the fact that I was now hyperventilating. He wanted me to be calm – a seven-foot tall talking rat was telling me to calm down!

Looking around through teary eyes, I saw the two turtles from before standing behind me, looking confused. In fact, they all looked confused, but probably not as much as I felt. I was surrounded by giant talking animals. What the hell was going on?

The rat ignored my outburst and continued to speak. "You have no reason to be afraid, I can assure you that much. My sons saved you last night from your attackers and brought you back here."

"Yeah," the blue-clad turtle said, taking a step towards me. "We heard your whistle and stopped those guys in that alley were beating you with a two-by-four. Don't you remember that?"

They had saved me. Four five-foot tall talking turtles had saved me? These were the people who had saved me!?

Looking around at all of them as I retreated away from them, fighting to keep myself from crying, I said the one word that kept popping up in my pounding head. "How?"

They all exchanged a look before the rat sighed and stepped forward. "My name is Hamato Yoshi, but you may call me Splinter," he began. "Fifteen years ago, I was bringing home some baby turtles when I ran into a strange man. I decided that something was off about him and decided to follow him. I witnessed him attempting to obtain a canister of what appeared to be a strange chemical ooze of some sort, but I was seen and the man and his associates tried to attack me. The canister was broken during the fight and the turtles were accidentally released from their tank. After the man fled from me, I attempted to save the turtles from the ooze which had engulfed them only to be bitten by a rat in the process. The ooze caused us to mutate into what you see today." He sighed again and went on, "I decided to raise the turtles as my own. I took them underground and taught them the ancient art of Ninjutsu, and using an old Renaissance art book I fished from the drain gave them all names – Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael." He pointed out each of the turtles as he named them.

I sat in stunned silence, listening to his story while the turtles stood in the background, nodding along, looking somewhat hopeful. A large part of me wanted to deny that any of it was true. My breathing had evened out by now, but my head was still pounding and despite my best efforts, I was silently sobbing. I didn't know if it was from the pain in my head or because I felt as though I had just been thrown into some kind of unbelievable sideshow that should not exist and yet, there they were in front of me. What choice did I have but to accept it?

"So do you have a last name or is it just Dani?" Donatello said, breaking my train of thought.

"Um, my name is Daniella," I told him. "Daniella Giorgianno."

"Italian, nice!" Michelangelo said, holding his hand up for a high-five.

Which I declined.

"So what's your story?" Raphael asked after a long moment of awkward silence.

I stared at him for a moment, uncertain of what to say before I sighed and shook my head. "Which part?" I said, wiping the tears out of my eyes.

"Let's start with what you did to piss off those Purple Dragon thugs from last night," Raphael said.

"I will go prepare some tea for us to enjoy," Splinter said, excusing himself from the conversation.

All of the turtles were considerably more relaxed now that, well, I was relaxed. Except that I wasn't. I still felt confused and I really wanted to get home and home was where Camille was, so that was saying something. I wondered if Dad was worried about me and if those guys from last night still had my phone.

"Yeah," Michelangelo said, twirling his nunchucks above his head. "You're not, like, one of them or something, are you?"

I frowned at him. "No, why – are the Purple Dragons, like, a gang or something?"

The turtles exchanged a look that questioned my intelligence.

Okay, so maybe they _were_ a gang. Good to know.

Raphael leaned towards me, his eyes narrowed and said, "She's playing dumb. They must have something bad on her."

"They haven't got anything on me," I said, glaring at him. "I got into a fight with my dad and his girlfriend last night. Then I left, but it was raining, so I decided to get on a bus and then I fell asleep. When I woke up, some tattooed guy named Luke Skywalker said he would help me and that he'd buy me water that I really didn't want, but I said yes, anyway, because I thought it'd be rude if I said no. Then he just took me to this bar, though, which I thought was weird, but went along with it anyway because I'm an idiot!" I looked away from them. "And then afterwards he said that I owed him, but he wouldn't take my money, so I-I –!" My voice fell apart as I broke out into hysterical sobs.

God, I was so stupid!

"Nice going, Raph," Leonardo said, glaring at his brother.

"Yeah, you made her cry again!" Michelangelo chimed in angrily.

I looked up at them surprised. Were they actually defending me?

"Hey, it's not my fault," Raphael said defensively. "She's the one who – OW!" He cried out loudly as Splinter reappeared, carrying a tray of tea and rapped him sharply upside the head with his walking stick.

Splinter pointed to the room with the sliding doors. "Ten flips now!" he ordered the turtle.

Raphael glared at me and I felt myself recoil under his gaze as he left.

"Your tea, Daniella," Splinter said, offering me a cup of murky green tea. "I apologize for my son. He can be careless with his words sometimes, but he is a good boy, overall."

"Right," I said, sniffing quietly. "Thank you." I wiped the rest of the tears from my eyes and looked up at the turtles as I accepted the tea. "And thank you for saving me."

"Don't worry about it," Michelangelo said, grinning at me. "We're heroes – it's our thing."

I frowned and looked down into the depths of my tea. "You should probably thank me then. You wouldn't get much heroing done if there weren't so many idiots like me here."

"Look," Leonardo said, putting his three-fingered hand on my shoulder. I resisted the urge to flinch. "You made some bad mistakes last night, but that guy tried to take advantage of you and that's not cool, no matter what."

"Leonardo is right," Splinter said, smiling at me as he sipped his tea. "You should never blame yourself for the actions others take against you."

I almost smiled when I heard this. It was easier said than done, but still good advice.

"Yeah," Donatello said, frowning, "but you don't seem like you know a whole lot about the city. Are you here on a school trip or something as a tourist?"

I frowned at him over my teacup. Intrusive, much? But, then, they had saved my life – answering a few intrusive questions was the least I could do. "My parents were divorced, so I used to come visit my dad in the summer, but I only just moved with him to New York a month ago."

"That explains why you didn't know you were dead-center in the middle of gang territory," Leonardo said. "Some of the others it was because you might have been smashed or something." He glared in Raphael's direction.

Had I been smashed – I'd never been drunk before, so I really had no idea. Maybe that was why my head hurt so much. Aside from the fact that it had been hit repeatedly with a two-by-four. I opened my mouth to speak, but fell silent as a large attack dummy dressed in a helmet and battle gauntlet came flying across the room and landed directly in front of Leonardo.

"Sorry about that, Leo." I looked up at Raphael as he walked over to us. "Got a little carried away there." He grabbed the attack dummy off the floor and carried it back to what I could now only assume was sort of ninjutsu training room.

"Well," I said, getting to my feet. "Thank you, guys, for everything, but I should probably be getting back home."

Where I can forget about giant talking rats and turtles.

"Well, wait a minute," Donatello said, getting to his feet. "You said the guy who attacked you found on a bus, right?"

I frowned at him. "Right."

Where was he going with this?

"So he got on at about the same time as you did?" Donatello asked with raised eyebrows.

"He got on a stop or two after me, yeah," I said, nodding.

"Then there's a chance that you wouldn't be very safe back at your home," Leonardo said. "The guy who attacked you might live nearby and come back to finish what he started. Or the Purple Dragons could have control of your neighborhood."

"Hmm," Michelangelo said thoughtfully, touching his finger to his chin. "That would make finishing what he had started exceptionally easy." He smiled and nodded silently.

I _tried _to ignore him. "I'll just make a formal complaint to the police." I continued quickly when I saw the looks they were all giving me. "And I won't tell them about you. If they ask how I got away, I'll just say that I ran away. They'll have to, at least, put a restraining order against the guy." I frowned as a thought occurred to me. "Won't they?"

"You really think that'll be enough?"

I looked up to see Raphael standing nearby. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Sure, you could violate a restraining order, but then you'd go to jail for it, so it was a win-win. Sort of.

"Well, since you seem too ditzy to figure this for yourself, I'll just spell it out for you," Raphael said, crossing his arms. "The reason the police have so much trouble controlling gang violence is because the gangs don't care about what they say and the reason for that is because they don't need to care. They've got strong allies who can back them out of just about any situation, and scared citizens who are more than willing to help 'em out, so they get to keep their kneecaps."

I glared at him. Did he really just call me ditzy – at least now I knew he was an ass like normal boys. "Well, I have to go to home. My dad is probably going to be worried about me and I have school and stuff – you know, a life."

"Hey, guys – I'm back!"

I turned to see a red-haired girl in a yellow shirt and blue jean shorts running down the steps. She was only slightly taller than me with blue eyes and was carrying a book bag and a pizza. She paused when she saw me. "And you're already awake."

"We told her everything," Michelangelo informed her, spinning his nunchucks as he walked over to her. "Oh, and Raph made her cry twice." He wagged two of his fingers at her.

"It was once," Raphael said quickly.

The girl frowned at him as she handed the pizza over to Michelangelo, who carried it off into the kitchen. Then she walked over to me and offered me her hand. "My name is April O'Neil. I'm sort of staying with these guys for a while, and I was kind of thinking the whole Intro to Mutants thing would go better if there was another human around. I ran out to get you some clean clothes from my old apartment for when you woke up. "

"Better hope she likes yellow," I heard Raphael mutter in an undertone.

Guess I wasn't the only human who knew about the turtles then.

I frowned as I shook April's hand. "I'm Dani and thanks but I was actually just about to leave. My dad is probably really worried by now."

If he was a good father, that is.

"Daniella," Splinter said, putting his hand on my shoulder. "I'm afraid I must insist that you remain here for the night. My boys will escort you home tomorrow night."

"Yeah, you kind of seem like you could use some rest, at least," April said, nodding.

"Oh, yeah, April's right," Donatello agreed quickly. "Your head injury was pretty bad, Dani. You should wait before you try to move around a lot."

"Plus, we just got pizza!" Michelangelo said as he reappeared carrying several plates of pizza.

"And you don't seem like you know your way around the city very well," Leonardo said, ignoring his brother's outburst. "There's a chance you could get lost if you try to go on your own."

Raphael opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, I said, "I have my father's address programmed into my cell phone, which has GPS."

"Except you didn't have a phone on you when we found you," Donatello pointed out.

Because a bunch of drunken gang members lifted it. Right. Now, I remember.

I knew they were only trying to be helpful, but a part of me was angry. I was angry that my head still hurt and that they were all ganging up on me. And the idea of spending of another five minutes with Raphael made me want to have my head bashed in all over again.

But it was just one night. Only one night. That wouldn't be so bad. Hopefully.

"So then you're staying," Michelangelo said, thrusting a piece of pepperoni pizza at me. "Awesome – welcome, to the sewer lair!"

Sewer lair, seriously? At least now I knew not to play in that river.

"Thanks," I muttered defeated, accepting the pizza from him.

"Come on," April said, grabbing me by the hand and dragging me away from the others. "I'll show you where you can change into some pajamas."

I allowed her to drag me along as I clumsily attempted to walk and eat at the same time. "Are you really okay with sharing your clothes with me?"

April smiled at me as she dragged me into a large four-stall family bathroom with a tiny shower in the corner. "Yeah, it'll be cool – kind of like a sleep over, and honestly, after being cooped around here for so long, I'm just glad to have another girl to talk to."

I threw the rest of my pizza in the garbage can by the door. I frowned as she pushed me into one of stalls. I closed and locked the door as she threw her bag over the top of the stall. "Don't you see other girls at school and stuff?"

"I don't really go to school." She sounded apprehensive as she said this. "I just Email my homework to my teachers and Donnie's been homeschooling me, but that's just about it. My cover story is leukemia."

I dug through the bag until I found something that looked like night clothes. I settled on a pair of yellow shorts with a red waist-tie and a pink tank-top. Thank god I shaved this week. "Why do you need a cover story?"

April laughed. "Aside from the fact I'm totally skipping school, you mean?"

"Yeah," I said, starting to getting changed.

I watched her feet go into the stall beside mine. "Throw me the bag?" she said after she had closed and locked the door.

I threw the bag over the top of the stall to her.

"Thanks. Anyway, I'm kind of hiding out from some bad people."

Hiding out from bad guys. Hmm. Why did that sound familiar?

I finished getting dressed and went over to the mirror over the sink to see how bad I looked. Beneath the bandages, there was dried blood plastered to my forehead and matted in my hair. When I turned, I could see the start of a dark bruise at my shoulder blades and there were dark finger prints on my arms from where Luke's friends had held me. My head hurt the most, but the worst part was that I couldn't deny it even if I had wanted to: I looked like hell.

And I felt worse.

"If you brush your hair out, the bandages won't look so bad."

I jumped when I realized April was standing beside me, rummaging through her bag. She was dressed in black-and-yellow splatter patterned shorts and a black T-shirt. She pulled her brush and handed it to me.

Smiling, I took it from her and began brushing my hair, which was harder than normal because of the blood and bandages. "Thanks."

"No problem," April said, adjusting her ponytail. "So what did Raph say?"

I looked at her with raised eyebrows. How did we get on this topic, all of a sudden? "Uh, he was just being a jerk."

"Yeah." She sat down on the sink counter. "He can be like that sometimes, but he doesn't really mean it." She frowned. "Was what he said really that bad, though?"

Was it – was it really?

"Not really," I admitted. "He was just being brutally honest." I finished brushing my hair, so that the bandages were just barely visible and handed her the brush. "Probably could have been nicer about it, though."

April hopped down off the counter and threw her brush back in her bag, laughing. "Doesn't that kind of contradict the point of being brutally honest?"

I frowned at her. I hadn't thought of it that way.

"Raph's a nice guy," she assured me. "You'll see."

Later that night, we all sat around the living room watching a late-night episode of _Space Heroes_. April and I sat on the couch, huddled under a thin blanket, with Splinter sitting in an old, red armchair nearby. Michelangelo and Donatello sat on the floor next to Leonardo, who was staring in awe at the screen as he mouthed all of the lines of the show. Raphael was sitting in the tire swing, away from the rest of us, muttering quietly to his pet turtle Spike.

My head felt better, but not by much. I had forgotten most of the weirdness that arisen earlier, except for the fact that the turtles were – well, turtles. I wasn't sure if I could say they were my friends or not. Yeah, they had saved my life, but we barely knew each other and who was to say that I would ever see them or April again after tomorrow night?

The show ended and was replaced by a news report on the new Pennington Expo Center that was going up in Midtown. Leonardo switched it off quickly and turned to us all. "That such a great episode – don't you guys think?"

"Yeah," Michelangelo said, yawning. "I especially like the parts where you kept imitating Captain Ryan." He smirked at his older brother.

"That was pretty much the whole show, Mikey," Donatello said, smiling as he nudged him with his shoulder.

"Whatever," Leonardo said, getting to his feet. "I'm going to bed." He waved to us as he walked off to his room. "Night, guys."

I waved back to him as Michelangelo and Donatello both got to their feet.

"I'm going to bed, too," Donatello said. Then he seemed to reconsider as his eyes fell on April. "Unless you need help with homework?"

"Nah, I'm good," April told him, smiling.

"Alright," Donatello said. Then he turned and started off to his room. "Night, April."

"Night, Donnie," April called back to him. She looked down at me as she stood up. "Just try to relax and everything will be fine, okay?" With that she turned and went off to her own room.

Michelangelo was already gone, so Splinter, Raphael, and I were the only ones left in the darkness of the living room.

Splinter got to his feet slowly. Then he crossed the living room and put his hand on my shoulder. "I hope that your stay here has been an enjoyable one, child. We have enjoyed having you with us these past few nights."

I watched him shuffle off to his bedroom silently.

"Hey."

I looked up to see a small, green turtle inches from my face, chewing on a tiny green leaf.

"This is Spike," Raphael told me simply. "I figured since you got to meet the rest of the family, you may as well meet him, too."

"Oh, cool," I said, trying my best to smile. "Your brothers told me about how you keep him as a pet."

"Yeah, well, you never got to meet him formally," Raphael said, sitting down on the arm of the couch, "so here I am."

We sat in silence for a few minutes before I looked up at him and asked, "Was there something else you wanted?"

Raphael tightened his hands into fists and sighed, shaking his head. "Look, Leo was right about earlier –"

"About which part?" I asked him.

It was obvious that he was uncomfortable speaking about it, but I didn't care. If he was going to apologize, I wanted him to do it properly.

"The part where I said it was your fault," Raphael clarified, a growl audible in his voice. He sighed again. "I mean, you were a real idiot - and I mean, like, a _huge_ idiot last night, but that was a bad thing that Luke guy did to you and it shouldn't have happened."

Okay, so it wasn't a traditional apology, but something told me it was the best I was going to get out of him. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

He shrugged as he got to his feet. "Yeah, don't mention it."

I watched him walk away silently as I lay down on the couch under the blanket. Maybe he wasn't _such _an ass.

"Hey, Dani, what were you talking to Raph about?"

I jumped as Michelangelo stood over me, eating the rest of the pizza April had brought earlier. I sighed and rolled over, so that I was facing the wall. "Nothing, Mikey. Don't worry about it."

Michelangelo nodded and started to leave. "Yeah, alright. Night, Dani."


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.

4

The next day, I sat on the hard stone floor of the turtles' training room, yawning. I wasn't able to get any sleep the night before and ended up spending most of the night tossing and turning. The idea that there was actually something out there that could turn humans into giant rats and turtles into giant mutant turtles was somewhat terrifying, and this had dawned on me the exact moment I had laid down to try to go to sleep. Go figure, right?

Eventually, I had managed to put the idea out of my head and stop worrying about it because with everything else that had happened already, did I really need to worry about stuff like that? I decided that I was on a strict need-to-know basis and the turtles seemed to agree with me because if they had wanted me to know, they would have told me. If I was meant to find out the answers to these questions, then the answers would come to me on their own. I wasn't about to go looking for them.

Now, I sat watching the turtles spar against Splinter and April, and couldn't help find myself feeling slightly awed. And very bored. I mean, martial arts are cool and all, but if I don't like to watch movies about it, why would I like to watch it in real life?

I sighed quietly and stood up. I walked across the room to where all the weapons and armor were, carefully avoiding the training platform. The collection of weapons was amazing. I couldn't imagine how they had possibly gotten all of them. Mom would have loved these.

"Hey, watch out!"

Before I could realize what was happening, I was down on the floor, being pinned to the ground by Michelangelo. "Are you okay, dude?" he asked as he held me down.

"I will be once you're off of me," I said, pushing him off of me. "What the hell happened?" I demanded, looking around at everyone.

"You almost got your head taken off, that's what happened," Raphael said, pointing at something behind me. "Don't you know it's dangerous for civilians to hang around a ninja training session?"

I turned and saw a thin black fan with razor edges, sticking out of the wall where my head had been only seconds earlier. I gaped at it.

"It's not her fault, Raph," April said quickly, glaring at him. She rushed over to me and helped me to my foot. "Dani, I am so sorry. I was sparring with Donnie and I just made a mistake with the tessen. I'm really sorry."

I looked from her to the fan and back again. "Uh, it's fine, I guess. Probably my fault for not paying attention. I was just thinking..." My voice trailed off as I finished the sentence inside my head. "About nothing." I pushed past April. "I'm just going to go out here where I can't get killed."

I walked across the lair to the makeshift living room and collapsed in a black beanbag chair Michelangelo had dragged out of his room earlier this morning. I sank down into it until I was able to use it as a pillow. I hugged the soft, smelly chair close to me and closed my eyes. That was twice in less than a week I had almost been killed. What was wrong with me?

"You know, if you're trying not to get killed, you may not want to hang out with such dangerous people."

I looked up to see Raphael sitting down on the couch beside me. "Like you?"

He shrugged. "Or your gangster boyfriend, Mr. Luke Skywalker."

I scoffed. "He wishes. Anyway, aren't you supposed to be training?"

"Training's over, thanks to you," Raphael informed me, smirking. "For today, anyway."

"Thanks to me, more like."

I looked up to see April, Donatello, and Michelangelo walking over to us. Michelangelo sat in the red armchair by the couch. April and Donatello sat beside me on two thin cushions.

"It's no one fault, dude," Michelangelo said, smiling. "Accidents happen."

Most household accidents didn't involve beheading someone, though.

"Where's Leo?" Raphael asked his brothers.

"Meditating with Splinter," Michelangelo said. "Where else?"

"Are you okay?" April asked me.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said.

"You seem awfully forlorn for someone who's supposed to be fine," Donatello said, catching my fib.

I sighed. "I really, really don't want to talk about it."

Donatello shrugged. "Sometimes talking about it is the only way to make things better."

I focused my gaze on the microfiber stitching of the beanbag chair. "I hate New York." My voice cracked as I said it. "I don't hate cities. Just this one. I hate being here with my dad and his girlfriend. I hate having to go to an inner-city school and things have just gone from bad to worse ever since I got here."

"Well, if it's so bad, why don't you just move back home with your mom?" Raphael asked. He sounded slightly confused. Like he thought I had a choice.

I laughed bitterly. "I wish I could."

"Well, why can't you?" April asked me.

I shook my head. "I've never talked about it before. To anyone. I'm not sure I can. I don't feel ready."

Raphael scoffed. "What, and you think sitting around feeling sorry yourself is going to make things better?"

I looked at him. Why should I tell him – them? They were strangers. They didn't know me, my family, or anything about my life. All they saw was some pathetic girl they had saved. "It's not exactly the sort of thing people like to hear about. That makes it hard to talk about."

"We want to hear about it," Michelangelo said. "We're asking to hear about it, aren't we?" He looked around uncertainly at the others.

"We've kind of been doing that for the last five minutes, Mikey," Raphael said.

I dug my nails into the fabric of the beanbag chair. They weren't going to drop it, I could tell, and as much as the idea of discussing my mother scared me, I wasn't sure I wanted them to. I knew they were strangers – potentially meaningless strangers I would never see or hear from again after today. But maybe that was what made them the perfect people to talk to about this.

The others had fallen silent. I could feel them watching me now. Waiting.

I focused my attention on my fingernails and took a deep, shuddering breath. "We lived in Connecticut in a nice house and we got along great. Mom was a professor at a nearby college." I paused uncertainly. I couldn't believe I was actually talking about this.

"So what happened?" Donatello asked me.

I began to blink quickly as tears stung the corners of my eyes and reached up to wipe them away, but it was too. I was crying. "I came home one day after school. The house was empty, but music was playing – it was Mozart. Requiem. It was my mother's favorite. The house smelled strange. It smelled like cookies. My mom never cooked. I went upstairs and put my books away. My mom had left cookies for me on my desk. I took them outside and did my homework in the backyard. I thought Mom had gone to the neighbors' house and she would be back soon, but when I finished my homework, it was almost time for dinner and she still wasn't home. I called her office at the college, but no one answered, so I figured she must have been busy. I decided to go for a bike ride." I was sobbing by now and there was to stop it. I wasn't trying to stop it, either. "I went through the house to get my bike out of the garage, but the door was locked and I couldn't get in. I tried to get in from the outside, but that door wouldn't open, either. My neighbors from across the street saw what was happening and came over to help. When we realized someone had disconnected the garage door, they called the fire department. The firefighters came and used axes to get in, and that was when they found her. She'd hung herself from a rafter beam in the garage. They brought her out in a body bag with the entire neighborhood there to see. I spent the rest of the night in the hospital, being treated for shock."

And all of this had only happened a month ago. That was why the announcement of my father's engagement to Camille had felt so horrible – more horrible than anything else he had ever done. He knew how upset I was by Mom's death, and why wouldn't I be?

The wounds were still fresh. They hadn't even begun to close when he and Camille had sprung that disaster of an engagement party on me. I couldn't think of a reason why they would choose to get engaged a month after my mother's suicide, except maybe to hurt me. Yeah, they loved each other, but Dad had been with Camille while he was still married to Mom and she divorced him when I was seven. Eight years had been passed since then. They had had eight years to get engaged and married, so why would they think now was a good time for it?

It had been the ultimate betrayal on my father's part. That's why I had left that night. Maybe that's why I followed Luke off the bus. Not because I wanted help, but because I wanted to be hurt more. Because I felt I deserved it.

"I am truly sorry for your loss and the pain you have endured."

I looked up teary-eyed to see Splinter standing in front of me with Leonardo standing in the background. Splinter looked sad and understanding as he stood, gripping his walking stick. He put his hand on my shoulder. "The loss of family is the greatest pain you will ever feel. No one should ever be forced to endure it, but eventually, the pain in your heart will fade as you move on and, perhaps, create a new family for yourself."

I looked sadly at him. "We don't all get to pick our families."

"Just because you're related to someone, that doesn't make them your family," Leonardo said, walking over to me. "Your real family is made up of the people who accept you for you."

I moved my gaze back to the beanbag chair. "I just want my mom back." As I spoke, I could feel myself calming down a little. The sobs were slower now. Less hysterical.

I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me and it felt good.

They had been the perfect ones to tell, and maybe they would become more than strangers to me, but I doubted it.

* * *

That night I stood on the steps of the entrance of the sewer lair silently. I leaned against the grimy wall of the lair, dressed in the clothes I had arrived in and a set of fresh bandages. The pounding in my head had gone away a long time ago, thankfully, but there was still a dull ache in the back of my skull and my eyes hurt from crying. My mood was a little better, too.

I didn't feel happy, exactly. I was still sad about Mom and angry at Dad, but I was definitely better. The fact that I was getting to finally go home again helped – I was going to get sleep in a bed again. A real bed!

After I had told them everything that had happened with Mom, everyone seemed determined to avoid the subject of anything that was even the slightest bit sad or depressing. I spent the most of the day playing with them and their collection of arcade games from the 80s. I ended up spending the rest of the day being lectured on ninjutsu and ninja weapons after I had accused Raphael of using a pair of salad tongs to fight dirty against his brothers.

Not that I learned anything, but it was worth it.

"Booyakasha!"

I looked up just in time to see Michelangelo coming towards the steps on his skateboard. He jumped, trying to do some sort of trick, but instead the board went flying through the air in my direction and Michelangelo fell on the floor. I didn't even have time to flinch.

"Mikey!" Raphael shouted as he jumped in front of me and grabbed the board right before it hit me in the face. "Would you watch what your doing?" He threw the board on the floor at his brother's feet.

"Hey, it's not my fault," Michelangelo said, getting to his feet. "I had a board malfunction. Besides, I was trying to cheer Dani up." He flashed me the thumbs up sign.

Trying to cheer me up – how? By attempting to fatally injure me twice in one day?

Raphael growled at him angrily. "And what makes you think seeing your crummy skateboard tricks would make her feel better?"

"Well, everyone likes skateboarding," Michelangelo told him, grinning. "Right, Dani?" He turned to me expectantly.

I nodded too stunned to put effort into an actual response.

Raphael glared at me. "Please, do not encourage him."

That made me feel un-stunned.

I smiled at him. "It's good to have hobbies, though. You know, aside from practicing ancient death arts from Medieval Japan."

"We've been over this, Dani," Donatello said, walking over to the steps with Leonardo, Splinter, and April at his side. "It's called _martial _arts, not death arts."

I shrugged. "May as well be. It is used to kill people."

Donatello opened his mouth to speak, but before he could April quickly said, "Just give it to her."

"Yeah, whatever," Donatello said. He walked over to me and handed me a small plastic object.

I turned it over in my hand. It was made of green plastic and shaped sort of like a turtle shell. The back of it was made up of a clear touch-screen surface. "Thanks," I said, smiling at him. "What is it?"

"It's called a T-phone," Leonardo told me. "It's so you can use it to get in contact with us in case you ever run into trouble."

"Yeah," April said, nodding. "All of our numbers are programmed into it."

I frowned down at the phone. "Trouble," I repeated. "You guys are expecting me to run into Luke again?"

Leonardo shook his head. "Not necessarily, no. We've got a lot of enemies, Dani, and they've got eyes out all over the city. If any of them saw you with us, that puts you in danger."

"Why, though?" I said. "I'm just some dumb girl you saved. Why would they target me?"

"It doesn't matter who you are," Raphael said. "Not to them. They see you with us, then they assume you're important, and that makes you a target. All they care about is getting to us and hurting an innocent outsider to do that ain't an issue for them."

"Yeah, we're talking about bad dudes, Dani," Michelangelo said. "They'll steal your pizza, your back-up pizza, and your emergency pizza money."

I looked at him with raised eyebrows. "You guys _have_ emergency pizza money?"

"That's not the point," Raphael snapped, punching the wall with his fist. "You need to take this seriously!"

"Raphael is right," Leonardo said, frowning at me. "This isn't a game and like it or not, you're a part of all this now, Dani. So when we get you back to the surface, I need you to be on your guard and to have the T-phone on you at all times."

I sighed as I shoved the T-phone in my pocket. "I'm sorry. I promise I'll do my best to look out for trouble, but this whole thing is just really making me nervous."

"Don't worry about the dangers of the past or the future," Splinter said "or else worry consume you. Worry about the dangers that come at you head-on in the now and then you will be safe."

"Try not to think about it too much," April said, smiling. "If worst comes to worst, you'll end up living down here with us." She walked over to me and before I had to chance to dodge her, she hugged me tightly. "I'm really sorry about your mom. I lost my mom, too, when I was a kid, so I know how it feels." She sighed as she released me. "And please, please come visit us again. I can't tell you how cool it was to see an actual human again."

"Don't give her any ideas," Raphael said before I had the chance to respond. "Now, can we get out of here, please."

"Just hold on a second." I turned to the others. "Thank you for saving me and looking after me these past couple of days. I really appreciate it, and I'm sorry if I was a little less than accepting."

April scoffed. "You took it better than I did."

I smiled at her in excited disbelief. "Really?"

She covered her face as she turned away from me uneasily. "I was hoping you wouldn't ask that."

"It is alright, Daniella," Splinter said as the others laughed. "You are forgiven."

I smiled at him. "Thank you."

"Okay," Leonardo said, "_now_, we can get out of here."

I waved to Splinter and April over my shoulder as I climbed over the turnstile.

"So," Raphael said, falling into step with me as we walked down the long subway tunnel that led to their home. "You seem to have really mellowed out."

So I had noticed.

I shrugged. "Donnie was right. I needed to talk about it."

"I'm pretty much always right," Donatello said, looking at us over his shoulder. "Remember that and you'll have no worries."

"No offense, dude," Michelangelo said, "but I'm pretty sure you're wrong about April wanting to be your –" He fell silent as his brother pounced him and used his bo staff – see, I can use weapon terminology, too – to put him in a headlock.

"Knock it off, guys," Leonardo called back to them, sounding bored.

I glanced at them as Donatello released Mikey, smiling. They really were like normal boys.

"So that's it then?" Raphael asked me. "You're all better – no more crying, no more fighting with your daddy, and following strange guys –"

"Except for you guys, apparently," I said, laughing. "And did you seriously just say 'daddy'?"

"Just answer the question!" Raphael said, looking away from me embarrassed.

Aww, so he did have a heart.

I sighed and shook my head. "I'm not all better. I'll never be all better. My mother committed suicide, I have no idea why, and I have no one to talk to. Not even my dad. We've pretty hated each other ever since they got divorced."

"Not that it's any of our business," Leonardo said as we passed an old, detached rusted subway car that had been decorated with multicolor spray paint and mounted with monster truck wheels, engine boosters, and something that looked similar to a spray-cannon, "but what brought that on?"

I gaped at the subway car as we passed it.

Donnie grinned at me. "It's the Shellraiser. My invention."

I nodded. "Cool," I said, tearing my eyes away from it. I turned my attention back to Leo. "I've always been angry at my dad ever since my mom divorced him for cheating on her. He doesn't like me because he thinks my mom turned me against him and his girlfriend. He says I'm too much like my mother and that's why we don't get along."

That wasn't true, though. He had turned me against him all on his own.

"No wonder you hate it here," Michelangelo said, walking backwards as he talked to me.

"Hey, Dani," Donatello said, typing away at his T-phone, "what's your dad's name – I need to look up his address."

"His name is Wilson Gio –" I said.

He nodded his head as he cut me off. "Giorgianno. I remembered – oh, and look that you guys live in a nice neighborhood."

I looked at him. "Is that so?"

Donatello frowned at me. "No, not really. Crime graphs says you're two blocks away from gang territory. Didn't your father research any of this before he moved here?"

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Eight years ago – apparently, not."

Why would he? That would require him to care.

Raphael reached into a small satchel that dangled from his belt and pulled out a handful of metallic, star-shaped disks about the size of my palm. "Here," he said, pushing the objects into my hand. "They're shuriken. They're kind of perfect for you because you can practice with them at home without any help from us."

I examined the shuriken, rubbing my fingers across their razor sharp edges. I smiled at Raphael. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." He smiled back.

"Hey, Raph," Michelangelo said, "how come you never loan me your shuriken or your sai or anything?"

Raphael glared at him. "Shut up, Mikey."

* * *

The subway tunnel went on for miles before it turned into sewers. I walked on the cement sidewalk above the river the majority of the time while the others sloshed through the stinking sewage. I don't know how long we walked for down there, exactly. It felt like hours or days even. But, eventually, we made it to the surface.

"Up you go," Leonardo said as he helped me up the ladder of the sewer shaft, gripping my wrist tightly.

I climbed up the ladder and crawled onto the cold, wet cement where I collapsed. It was dark. The only light came from a few nearby lampposts that looked just about burned out. We were in a long, narrow ally outside some sort of factory. There were cardboard boxes everywhere and I could hear the sounds of workers yelling, and trucks coming and going. Why couldn't I have been this aware the night I'd met Luke?

Maybe having my skull bashed in changed things a bit.

"You guys have got to find a new entrance to that place," I said, getting to my feet. "How much further do we have to walk?"

"We're not walking," Raphael told me. "And you aren't, either."

I looked at him confused. "Um, what?"

"We're going rough-jumping," Michelangelo told me, grinning.

I blinked at him. "B-but I can't rough-jump. I'm not a ninja."

"Exactly," Leonardo said. "That's why you're not walking."

Before I had a chance to protest, Raphael had picked me princess-style and was parkour jumping up the fire escape of the factory, following closely after his brothers. "Oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my god," I said, burying my face in his chest as his leapt onto the roof.

"Would you stop freaking out?" Raphael said, looking at me. His face bore an expression of mixed disgust and amusement. "I didn't drop you the night we saved you. I'm not going to drop you now."

He had carried me like this the night they had saved me?! Suddenly, I wanted to kill them.

"I can't help it," I said, pulling the hood of my coat over my head. "I hate heights."

"Boy, you'd make a bad ninja," Raphael said, laughing.

A scream escaped my throat as he jumped and flipped through the air onto the adjacent rooftop. This made him laugh even harder. "What are you screaming for?" he said as he ran after his brothers. "Nothing happened. I've still got you. You're perfectly safe."

I glared as I buried my face further into his chest and dug my fingernails, deep into his warm flesh. "Just shut up and get me home."

If I lived through this, he was dead!

* * *

"Okay, Dani," Leonardo said when we reached the street my dad lived on twenty minutes. "You can let go of Raph now. You're safe."

"Here, I'll make it easy for you," Raphael said, dropping me unceremoniously.

I glared at him as I got to my feet. Back to being an ass, I see.

I walked to the edge of the roof. We were on top of the rundown apartment building at the end of the street. I could see my dad's building from where I was.

"Dude, was she like that the entire time?" Michelangelo asked, laughing loudly.

"The entire time," Raphael told him, nodding. "She thought she was dying!"

"You know," I said, turning back to them. "I thought ninja were supposed to be silent."

"So were you," Raphael reminded me. "But you were screaming loud enough for the whole city to hear."

I scoffed as I sat down on the edge of the roof to lower myself onto the fire escape. "Whatever. I'm going to head home now." I looked back at them. "Thanks...For everything."

Raphael crossed his arms and frowned at me. "Haven't you thanked us enough tonight – why don't you just get out of here? Can't you tell we're telling tired of dealing with you?"

The feeling was mutual.

"Be nice, Raph," Leonardo said in a warning tone. He turned to me. "He is right, though. You don't have to thank us so much. We were only doing our jobs. Just be sure to call us when you get in, so we know that you weren't attacked by anyone."

As he said this, I moved my hand to the pocket of my coat where the shuriken Raphael had given me were. "And as soon as I'm done dealing with my dad. Got it."

I dropped down onto the fire escape. A cloud of rust fell down on the alley below. I ran down the steps of the fire escape until I got to the final platform. I found the release switch for the ladder and tried to pull it, but it was stuck.

"Great," I muttered, reaching out as far as I could. "Just great. First, I get my skull cracked open with a two-by-four – guess I can cross that one off my bucket list. Then I find out mutated, smart ass turtles are living in the sewers of New York. And now, I have to jump."

I grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder with both of my hands and pushed myself off the platform. "Don't look down," I muttered as I dangled five feet in the air. "Don't look down."

I began to count backwards from three in my head.

Three.

I could hear the turtles above me, still making jokes about how scared I had been when they had gone roof-jumping, although a part of me was glad they were still there, watching out for me. Raphael was the loudest. He sounded proud of himself for some reason.

Two.

Probably because he had managed to scare a poor, stupid human girl. As if that was an accomplishment.

One.

I let go. I fell through the air and landed hard on my knees. Pain shot through both of my legs and I forced myself to my feet, praying that none of the passersby had noticed my fall. This wasn't like the night I had gotten on the bus and needed saving. The streets had been empty then because of the storm, save for a few people. Tonight there were people everywhere, though, and if I got lucky, they'd just chalk me up to being a drunken teenager, causing trouble and they wouldn't even notice the turtles.

I stood silently in the ally I had dropped into, checking to make sure no one had seen. It was similar to the one Luke had taken me to that night, but then I guess all allies are alike. This was one strewn with garbage and litter with a big, green dumpster at the end of it. Luckily, no one had stopped or was staring.

No one noticed nor cared about me tonight.

I looked up as I made my way out of the ally. All I heard from the abandoned apartment building was silence. The turtles seemed to be gone.

I looked around as I got onto the sidewalk. I had never paid attention to the people who roamed this streets before, but after what Donnie had told me about the crime graphs, I felt like I had no choice. Leo had told me to be on my guard after.

The people looked mostly normal, but I saw one or two with dragon tattoos like Luke's. I didn't recognize either of them, though, and they didn't recognize me. Even so, I kept my hands in my pockets at all times – with one hand on the T-phone and the other on the shuriken. As I walked, I couldn't help but wonder what Mom would think of this – me, her daughter being forced to walk down the streets of New York carrying a cellphone and weapons because she knew there was a chance she'd get attacked.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, I got to Dad's building. I rang the door to his loft.

Five minutes passed.

I rang it again. What time was it? Maybe they were asleep.

Ten minutes passed.

I rang it again, never taking my finger off the button until finally someone answered. It was Camille.

She stood in front of me in a pink tank-top and shorts pajama set that clashed horribly with her hair. For a second, I thought she would hit me again, but instead she smiled. "Oh, sweetie, I was so worried about you. Your father's been going crazy."

I felt my spine go rigid as she reached out and hugged me tightly. "He has?"

I couldn't tell if the sweetness in her voice was real or fake this time. Usually I could tell by my instincts or just from hearing her voice, but after what happened the other night, I didn't know what to think. It had been the first time she'd ever hit me.

Camille pulled away from me, grinning. "Of course he has. He's your father, sweetie, and with what happened to your mother, he's just been so on edge." Her eyes filled with tears as she swept back my hair and saw the bloody bandages. "Oh, my god. Sweetie, what happened to you?"

Just wait til she saw the bruises.

"Um, I would rather explain inside," I said. I met her gaze uncertainly. "If that's okay with you."

"Of course," Camille said, stepping aside and letting me in. "Why wouldn't it be okay?"

I shrugged as I followed her down the hallway to the elevator. I stepped inside of it silently.

We rode the elevator in silence. When we got up to the loft, Dad was in the living room, pacing. His eyes lit up when he saw me with Camille, but not with happiness or relief. He was angry at me. "Where the hell have you been the past two days – what the hell happened to you?"

If he only knew the half of it.

Camille guided me into the book-cluttered living room and I sat down in one of the three leather armchairs. "I asked her the same thing downstairs," she said as she sat down across from me. "She wouldn't tell me."

I looked from Camille to my father and back again. "I didn't say that. I said I wanted to explain inside."

Dad stood behind Camille with his arms crossed. "What happened – where were you? Answer the questions."

"I got on a bus after I left," I told him, remembering the story I had made up for the turtles the day before. The tale that was meant for the police. "I fell asleep and had to get off at the last stop. I was lost and some guy in a gang jumped me, but then some friends from school heard my attack whistle and stopped the fighting. I slept over at their place for the past two nights."

Dad stared at me, calculatingly. "A guy in a gang?" he repeated. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that?"

Was he serious right now?

"Yes, Dad, I do," I said. "What the hell do you think happened – I got the shit kicked out of me by my pimp!?"

"Well, Dani, I'm sorry," Camille said, frowning at me, "but after your behavior the other night, we don't know what to believe."

"M-my behavior?" I stammered in disbelief. I turned to my dad. "She hit me and you _let _her. I had every right to leave after that."

"I did not hit you!" Camille said, looking horrified that I would even suggest such a thing. "I don't believe in hitting children."

"I don't know who you think you are, young lady," Dad said, shaking his head. "Running away, making up stories, accusing your mother of hitting you – and you couldn't even be bothered to call us to let us know you were safe."

I stared at him in disbelief. "The guy who jumped me lifted my cellphone – he took my wallet, my keys – everything!"

"Oh, really?" Camille said, smiling. "Then how do you explain this?" She held up the T-phone.

"Wha–?" I was so shocked I couldn't even manage to finish the sentence. "When did you –?"

Camille's smile grew bigger, her eyes shining. "When I hugged you in the hallway – you never were bright, were you?" She laughed quietly before her smile turned into a snarl disgust. "Your father asked me to check you for drugs. Looks like he had good reason, too."

I was already checking my pockets for the shuriken – Raphael's shuriken. But it was too late she had them. She was holding them in her hand as she handed the T-phone to Dad. "Those things were gifts from my friends," I told them. "The shuriken are for self-defense –"

Dad scoffed. "What friends – you don't have any friends. You just moved here. You're always saying so."

"I bet she stole them," Camille said, "that's why she looks like this. Because the shop owner caught her and decided to teach her lesson, but that doesn't matter, does it?" She got to her feet, throwing the shuriken to the floor and crossed the room to where I was. She grabbed me by the jaw, forcing me to look at her. "Because you had _no _business – _none _– bringing weapons into this house. I don't care what they were for or whose they were. They are going in the garbage."

"You are garbage." I had meant to think it, but the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Then I was on the floor and my head was pounding again. My barely closed head wounds had reopened and the blood was spilling out. Dad was yelling, but I didn't know if it was at me or Camille. I decided to pretend he was yelling at her because he knew she had gone too far this time.

Camille was the kitchen, though, standing at the counter, raising the meat mallet over the T-phone repeatedly. Over and over again. And Dad was standing over me.

That made it hard to pretend.

* * *

We got to the emergency room at three-thirty. They were in hysterics when they told the doctors they had found me like this, being jumped by some teenagers in masks. The explanation for the bandages was that they had tried to fix me up at home, but had failed and the doctors believed them. Why wouldn't they?

People got mugged everyday in New York.

As I sat in the doctors office in a paper gown with Dad and Camille, all I could do was wonder what the turtles would do when I never called them. Would they assume I had no desire to contact them ever again?

Maybe.

I hadn't even said goodbye when I saw them last.

After the doctor left to fill my prescription, Camille stood up and walked over to me. "If you ruin one more detail of my wedding," she whispered to me, "I'll make you sorry you were ever born."


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.

5

The doctors at the ER didn't do much for my injuries. They did a CAT Scan, re-bandanged the wounds with hideous neon green bandages, and prescribed some medicine for the pain. They told me to come back if the pain in my head came back.

When I went back to school, none of the teachers questioned the reasons given for my injuries in the slightest. A doctors' note equaled immediate benefit of the doubt for Dad and Camille. I also found out that I didn't make the track team, which was fine because I didn't really want to play any sports anyway.

I spent the rest of the week running errands, replacing everything I had lost on the night of the attack. I hated it. I felt paranoid. I was constantly on edge. Always on the look out for Luke and the Purple Dragons.

Not that it mattered. Now, that I had lost my only line of contact to the turtles, I was on my own if I ever ran into him again.

An eerie quiet had fallen over the loft. There was a constant tension between Dad, Camille, and I. Like there was an argument lurking just below the surface of every conversation. So I stopped talking to them. And they stopped talking to me.

Late at night, I lay in bed, wondering what Mom had been trying to accomplish by committing suicide. What reason could she possibly have for killing herself?

Did she think I would be better off without her?

If so, she had been wrong.

* * *

It had been almost two weeks since the turtles had returned me to my home. I had finally been able to take the bandages off and lay in my bed silently, listening to the Mozart CD that was playing quietly in the background. I looked around the room silently.

It was small and cramped with yellow wallpaper and a tiny closet. There was a small desk with my laptop on it next to the window where the fire escape was and the bed was a small twin-sized bed covered in pink linen. Shelves covered with my new school books hung along the walls. There were no pictures of Mom. Sometime during my time with the turtles, Dad or Camille – probably Camille – had taken them all out of the room.

This room had been my second bedroom since I was seven. Now, it felt like a prison.

_Pling! _

I jumped as I heard the sound of something ricocheting off my closed window. "What the hell...?"

_Pling!_

I stood up as I heard the sound again. I pushed aside the swivel chair at my desk and wrenched open the window. I grabbed a penlight out of a cup on my desk and stuck my head out into the cool night air. I turned on the penlight and then I saw them: two small star-shaped metallic discs, laying on the balcony of the fire escape.

"Shuriken." I reached out and grabbed them off the balcony.

"So you are alive."

I looked up. Standing on the roof of the apartment building next to the one I lived in were Raphael and Donatello. Raphael stood with his arms crossed, glaring down at me while Donatello knelt on the edge of the roof, using his bo staff to balance him.

"Hold on a sec," I said. I climbed over the window ledge and onto the balcony. Then I reached inside my bedroom and closed the blinds, so Dad wouldn't be able to see. I closed the window and turned back to them. "What are you guys doing here?"

"Well," Donatello said, "we were going to send Mikey instead, but we were afraid Raph might kill him if we left them alone together." He jumped off the roof and landed on the opposite end of the balcony noiselessly.

Raphael flipped off the roof and landed right in front of me. "Don't you know how to use a phone – we told you to call us that night and you never did."

"Yeah," Donatello said, nodding. "We would have come sooner, too, but Leo thought it would better to wait."

I frowned. Had they been worried about me?

"I'm sorry," I said, sighing. "I wanted to call, but my dad and his girlfriend went crazy when I came home. They took the T-phone –"

"You let them take the T-phone?" Raphael said, cutting me off. "All of our information was in that thing!"

Donatello nodded urgently. "And do you have any idea how hard I worked to put that thing together before you left – it's not like we just have extra ones lying around or stashed in our knee pads. We don't just give them out to anyone, you know!"

"I didn't let them take anything," I said quickly. "My dad's insane girlfriend pic-pocketed it and the shuriken, and then she smashed the phone."

I could feel a dull pain building in the back of my head. I pulled out the bottle of prescription painkillers the doctors had given me. I dug one of the pills and swallowed it.

Raphael swore loudly and snatched the bottle from me. "What are these for?" he asked, examining the bottle.

I took the bottle back from him. "They're painkillers. I got them at the hospital."

"What were you in the hospital for?" Donatello asked me.

"My wounds reopened. It's no big deal." It almost didn't sound like a big deal when I said it that way.

"No big deal?" Raphael repeated. "Wounds don't just open up again on their own. Something must have happened – what was it?"

I shook my head. I didn't want to lie to them, but I couldn't tell them about what was happening with Dad and Camille. Even if I did tell them, it wasn't like it would change anything. The most they could was lecture me.

"Hello!" Raphael said, waving his hand in front of my face, breaking my train of thought. "Are you going to tell us what happened or aren't you?"

I tried to come up with a believable excuse on the spot. "It's nothing, Raphael. I fell out of bed and hit my head on my desk."

Donatello glared at me, crossing his arms. "Not buying it."

"Me neither," Raphael said. "It doesn't match up with the rest of your story. Why don't you tell us what's really going on?"

What, that Camille was a psychotic lunatic who couldn't make up her mind about corporal punishment, all of a sudden?

"Nothing's going on," I said, trying to sound reassuring. "You're both just being paranoid." I pulled my new phone out of my pocket. It was identical to my old one, except for the label with my name and address on it. "So you can have my new number."

I held the phone, waiting for one of them to take it. After a minute or two of uncomfortable silence, Donatello snatched the phone from me and began putting my information in his T-phone.

"Unbelievable," Raphael said, shaking his head. "We save your life and you're lying to us – and you actually think we're stupid enough to believe it."

I could hear the disappointment in his voice, but I didn't know what else to do. If Camille found out I had told someone, there was no telling what she would do and it was already pretty clear that Dad wasn't on my side. What else could I do?

"If there was something going on, I would tell you," I said.

Just not about this.

"Just tell us who it was, Dani." Donatello handed the phone back to me. "Was it the Dragons again – or the Kraang?"

I looked at him. "What – what the hell is a Kraang?"

"Okay, so it wasn't them," Donatello said, nodding. He sounded relieved.

Okay then...

"Okay, so was that it?" I said. "Because if so, I'm going to go back inside before Dad comes in and starts thinking I ran away or something." I turned and started to open the window.

But Raphael reached out and grabbed me by the arm, stopping me. "I want you to come down to the lair with us. Just for the weekend. I'll talk it over with Leo and we can probably pick you up on Friday."

I stared at him. He looked angry and disappointed, but accepting. "Why?"

When did he get so caring - when did any of them, for that matter?

"You're not safe here," Raphael said simply.

"You know, I hate to say this, but he's right," Donatello said. "Which is hard to believe because he's Raph, but New York City just seems to hate you. Plus, April would love to see you. Just think how she'll be when I tell her I thought of this!"

I ignored him. "I'll have to ask my dad," I told Raph. "He might say no."

Or he might actually believe that I was capable of making friends.

"Dani, dinner!"

I jumped as I heard Camille calling for me.

"Who was that?" Raphael asked as I turned and finished opening the window all the way.

"My dad's girlfriend," I said. "Her name is Camille."

"The one who smashed my T-phone?" Donatello said, glaring in her direction. "Awesome. She sounds nice."

"Yeah," I said as I reached inside and pulled the blinds up. I climbed back inside my bedroom over the window ledge. "Sorry about that." I turned to face them again, but they were already gone.

"Dani, didn't you hear me?"

I turned to see Camille, standing in my bedroom door. She smiled at me. "Sweetie, what are you doing, staring out the window?"

"Sweetie" had become her new pet name for me ever since I had returned home from the turtles' lair the last time.

I shrugged. "I was bored, so I was looking out the window."

Camille's smile faltered. "Oh, right. I thought I heard you talking to someone, that's all."

Why was whispering the one thing ninjas didn't know how to do?

"Oh, yeah," I said. "A friend of mine from school called and asked if I wanted to stay over this weekend. I told her I'd have to ask Dad."

And by "her" I really meant a giant mutated turtle named Raphael. Who would never find out about this conversation. Hopefully.

"Oh," Camille said, smiling again. "So you _did _make some friends at school?"

I nodded silently.

Camille nodded and raised her eyebrows at me. "And does this friend have a name?"

Crap - think of a name, think of a name, think of a name!

"Yeah, her name is Rachel." I used the first R name that popped into my head. "Rachel Hamato. She's in my gym class. Her family is Japanese. She studies karate."

That was believable. Right?

"Hmm," Camille said. "Alright. I guess you can go. I was going to see if you wanted to come with your father and I to pick out save-the-dates for the wedding, but it'll probably just be more fun to surprise you with the finished product." She flashed an overly sweet, toothy smile at me. "Now, come on. Dinner is ready."

That was odd. First, they send me to the emergency room, and now they wanted to spend quality time with me?

I followed Camille out to the kitchen and sat down silently.

"So how was school today?" Dad asked as Camille put some chicken on my plate.

"Fine," I said. I looked at Camille as she handed me my food. "Thanks."

Camille sat down at the table and said, "It was better than fine. Dani made a friend today. She even got invited to sleepover."

I nodded as I took a bite of my chicken."Yeah, her name is Rachel. It's okay if I go, right, Dad?"

"Yeah," Dad said, nodding. "It'll be nice."

What will be nice – not having me in the house for two days?

We finished eating in silence.

* * *

When I woke up at six-thirty the next morning to get ready for school, I had two missed calls from the turtles.

I showered and dressed quickly and left without eating.

My phone rang just as I was leaving the building. "Hello?"

"Don't you ever answer this thing?" Raphael said irritated. "We called you twice already."

I lowered my voice and glanced up and down the street as I walked."I was asleep. It's what surface-dwellers do. Anyway, I'm on my way to school, so I can't talk long."

"Hey, Dani," Leonardo said. "Nice to hear you're still alive." I could hear him smiling.

I frowned. "Am I on speaker phone?"

I heard Michelangelo, Donatello, Splinter, and April all say "hi" in response.

Leonardo laughed. "Sorry about that. We wanted to talk about this weekend – about how Raph invited you down here."

I raised my eyebrows as I walked down the busy street and turned a corner to the street where my bus stop was. A small group kids stood waiting and goofing each other. "Am I being uninvited?"

"Oh, don't worry," Michelangelo said. "I already checked. That's movie's not real – it was all made up."

"That's not what she meant, Mikey," Raphael said.

"How would you know?" Michelangelo demanded. "Just because you –"

There was a loud crash in the background followed by the sound of Michelangelo screaming as Raphael yelled profanities at him. I flinched as I heard the sound of another crash that sounded farther away from the phone. "Is everything alright?"

"Oh, yeah, it's fine," Donatello said. "Raph is just being, you know, Raph."

Actually, I didn't know. Sometimes I forgot that I still didn't know the turtles very well.

"And don't worry," Leonardo said reassuringly. "You're not being uninvited. We just wanted to know where we should pick you up tomorrow."

Was tomorrow Friday?

"Raphael!" Splinter yelled in the background. "Release your brother immediately!"

I got in line with the other kids waiting for bus, praying that none of them could hear what was happening on the other end of the line. "Right because it's not like you guys can just show up at the loft. Why don't you just meet me at my school tomorrow after classes are done?"

There was one last crash and the yelling in the background stopped, but I thought I could hear the sound of Michelangelo groaning faintly. What had Raphael done to him?

Wait. Did I really want that answered?

"That sounds good," Leonardo said. "I guess we'll meet you there."

"Hey, genius," Raphael said as Splinter yelled at him to get started on his punishment, "don't forget to find out what school she goes to."

"Abraham Lincoln High on Fiftieth," I said before any of them could ask. The bus pulled up. "I've got to go, guys. No phones allowed on the bus."

I ended the call and switched the phone to silent, climbed up the steps of the school bus silently, and sat down in the first seat I could find. Honestly, I hated riding the bus to school. It was partially because it was a constant reminder of the night I'd been attacked by the Purple Dragons and partially because it reminded me of Mom. When she had been alive and I had lived with her, I used to have to take a long bus ride from the bottom of the hill to my school. She would walk me down the hill every morning before she went to work, so we could talk to each other.

Now, I was left to walk on my own through a city I knew nothing about, constantly looking over my shoulder for people who would want to hurt me. Except for when the turtles were there.

I thought back to last night. Would Mom hate me for lying to the people who had protected me?

Or would she understand my reasoning – would they?

Would they hate me?

Raphael was already mad at me, but he didn't seem to be pressing the issue. Maybe he had figured out what I already decided for myself: If things got worse, I would tell.

Or maybe he had decided to let me suffer in my silence.

I walked down the hall to the loft silently. I had just gotten off the bus from school. Outside it was cold and rainy, but not storming, thankfully. I opened the door to the loft and froze. "What the hell...?"

The floor of the kitchen and living room was covered in millions of shards of broken glass. Camille stood in the kitchen, red-faced and panting. Her hair was a mess and she looked like she was crying. She spun around to look at me as I stood in the doorway of the loft. "Close the door now," she growled at me.

Well, at least, now I could tell she was angry.

I closed the door silently and as I turned around to face her, a large white china bowl smashed against the wall beside my head, showering me with bits of broken glass. "What was that for?" I asked angrily.

Camille stomped over to me, glass crunching beneath her feet as she walked. "You know what it was for," she told me, grabbing a fistful of my hair in her hand. "You did this – you caused it!"

Tears stung the corners of my eyes as she dragged me to the kitchen and threw me down on the hard floor, glass shattering beneath me as I fell. What was she talking about?

What had I done – I had just gotten home.

Camille knelt down in front of me, her face inches from my own and her eyes mad. "Clean it up."

I looked around for a broom silently, but there wasn't one. I got to my feet slowly to get one out of the closet, but Camille pushed me back down to the ground. I fell and felt the back of my head collide with the counter top. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out. "Use your hands, you stupid slut!" she spat at me. "You think I don't know – you think your father doesn't know?"

What was she talking about?

I stared up at her silently. "I don't –"

"Really?!" Camille said. "Really – you don't know?!" She reached up and grabbed a piece of paper off the counter top and shoved it in my face. "Just look at all the trouble you cause!"

I took the paper from her silently. It was an eviction notice. We were being evicted for noise complaints. I started to say something, but when I looked up, Camille was gone. I heard the door to Dad's bedroom slam shut.

I heard a faint buzzing sound and my eyes fell on my cellphone, which had fallen out of my pocket. I grabbed the phone and turned it off without checking to see who was calling. I shoved it in my pocket and began to pick up the glass carefully with my hands, so that I wouldn't cut myself.

* * *

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror silently. Being careful hadn't helped me much. It had kept me from cutting my hands – mostly – but I still had managed to cut myself when I had fallen on the glass. Luckily, they weren't very deep and could be easily hidden. They wouldn't need more than some peroxide and Band-Aids.

The bump on my head the size of a small rock would be harder to hide, but I wasn't too worried. If I did my hair right, I could hide it the same way I had hid the bandages. No one would notice.

Out in the living room, I could hear Dad and Camille talking about the eviction. We had thirty days to find a new place to live. And everyone – meaning them – seemed to agree that it was my fault.

I grabbed a box of Band-Aids out of the medical closet and went down the hall to my room, happy to see Dad and Camille were back to ignoring me. I sat down on the bed and stared at my phone on my desk. None of the turtles had called since that morning. A small part of me wanted to pick up the phone and beg them to come get me, so I could start the weekend early without having to worry about all the drama that was happening at home. But I couldn't.

Things would only get worse if I stormed out of the house randomly to go meet my friends somewhere. And if I called the turtles asking for something like that now, who knew what they would say, especially Donatello and Raphael. I was stuck.

I sighed as I finished putting on the last of the Band-Aids. At least, it was only until tomorrow.

* * *

I woke up early the next morning. I had zero missed calls. I showered quickly and grabbed my bag out of my room, which was already filled with two days' worth of clothes. Then I left to catch the bus and I felt like a zombie as I boarded it. My head was in a haze and I felt lost at school. I was lot to class a lot. That didn't matter, though. The fact that I was exhausted because I had spent half the night digging glass out of my skin and replacing Band-Aids didn't matter. The fact that I didn't have to go home today didn't matter. Nothing mattered. All I could think of was Mom.

How she would drive me to New York every summer, so I wouldn't have to go by plane, surrounded by strangers. How she would plant flowers in the spring, so they would be ready when I came home during the last week of August right before fall. How I had woken up in the middle of the night once when I was nine and found her in the kitchen, sobbing.

Why was she so upset then – had she always been like that?

_ "What's going on?" _

_ I saw sirens blinking in the last light of the sunlight. There were people all over our yard. They our neighbors, firefighters, and paramedics._

_ "That poor girl." _

_ They had realized before I did. _

Why did she have to leave me alone with them?

"Dani?"

I looked up. I was standing out in front of my school. Most of the buses were gone, but there were still people everywhere. April was standing in front of me. She looked worried and a little bit afraid. "Dani, are you alright?"

"April," I said simply.

What was she doing here?

April nodded. "The turtles sent me to come get you," she said, grabbing my hand. "Come on, they're waiting for us."

The turtles?

Oh, right. Those turtles. I was going with them today.

I followed after April silently, slowly. I felt like I was moving through tar. We walked to the end of the street to a where a small, garbage-strewn vacant lot stood empty. In the very center of the lot lay a manhole cover that had been pushed aside to give way to the dark, narrow sewer shaft that led to the world below the surface.

"Come on," April said, lowering herself down into the shaft.

I followed after her and climbed down the grimy ladder silently.

"Hey, Dani," Michelangelo said as I reached the last rung on the ladder. "Long time no see."

"Yeah," Leonardo said, smiling at me. "It's good to see you again."

I stood and stared at all them silently. My mind was a blank.

"Uh, is she alright?" Raphael asked April, frowning, after a long moment of silence.

April shrugged uncertainly. "I'm not sure. When I found her, she was just staring off into space. She hasn't said more than two words to me."

Was I supposed to?

Leonardo frowned and walked over to me. "Alright, Dani," he said firmly, putting his hand on my shoulder. "You need to talk to us. Did something happen – are you alright?"

I turned my gaze to the dark green-brown water at my feet. I needed to talk to them. Did I really – couldn't I just stay like this?

"Dani!" Leonardo said, shaking me maybe a little hard than he should of. "Don't ignore me. Tell us what's going on."

They already knew, though. Why did I have to tell them again?

"Don't you want to talk to us, Dani?" Michelangelo was the one who spoke this time.

I looked up at him silently. He looked hurt. I looked back at the water. "Mom is dead."

"Oh," Leonardo said with notes of confusion and understanding in his voice. "Dani –"

"Quit hounding on her, Leo," Raphael said. "She's just upset. Come on, let's get out of here." He turned and started walking down the sewer.

Yes, that's right. I was just upset. Raph got it.

I followed him silently down the sewer tunnel, leaving the others behind.

* * *

A few hours later, I sat on the couch in the sewer lair with the others. I didn't feel better, exactly. Just more myself. More normal. The haze inside my head was finally gone. "I don't understand what happened. I just woke up this morning and felt empty."

"Your mother only died a month ago," Donatello said. "You're probably still mourning her and based on what you've told us, it was probably a really traumatic experience for you." He sighed. "It sounds like you're still in shock and your mind hasn't figured out how to cope with it yet."

I nodded silently, even though I didn't really understand. The doctors had treated me for shock at the hospital the night Mom had died. Why was I still feeling the effects now?

As if reading my mind, Splinter offered me a cup of tea from a nearby trey and said, "Time does not heal wounds. It's what you do with that time that will heal you."

So I needed a hobby?

I took the tea from him and sighed. "I guess that's the problem then – I don't know what to do with my time."

Except study, maybe, since I had nothing better to do.

I stood up and went to the kitchen where my bag and all my books from school were. I sat down at the small table and pulled my Geometry book towards me, but I couldn't concentrate. My eyes fell back on the living room. They were all watching another episode of Space Heroes, except for Michelangelo who was reading comic books in his tire swing.

"They don't get it."

I looked up to see Raphael, leaning against the counter top, playing with his sai. I raised my eyebrows at him. "And you do?"

Raphael frowned at me. Then he sighed and sat down next to me. "Look, I'm going to tell you something I've never told any of the others before. Except Spike."

I tried to force myself to smile, but I couldn't. "It's an honor and a privilege." My sarcasm in my voice was frigid and stony. It sounded more like an insult than a joke.

And that's the way Raphael saw it, too. "Hey," he said, glaring at me as he got to his feet, "if you don't want to hear it –"

He fell silent as I grabbed by him his wrist to keep him from leaving. He stared at me. "It's not that I don't want to hear it," I told him. "I just don't really think you'd understand."

Raphael sighed as he sat down again. "I'm not saying I understand," he said. "Not one-hundred percent, anyway. All I'm saying is, I've been there."

"You have?" I asked, looking up at him.

A dark look crossed his face and suddenly, it was like he was a completely different person. He was lost, aching, and vulnerable – not some sarcastic asshole who liked to hear himself talk. "We were on a mission. I was in charge, and Mikey got hurt. Bad. I thought..." His voice trailed off and he looked up at me. "I can't even begin to describe how I felt. It was the worst feeling I've ever felt before in my life."

"I'm really sorry you went through that," I said. "You must be so happy that your brother is still alive."

Raphael nodded. "Yeah, I am," he said, "but I have _never _forgotten that feeling and it's more than just shock and whatever other fancy medical terminology Donnie wants to use, so he can feel smart. It's anger and hurt and pain and it – it makes you sick inside that you let that happen to someone you care you about!" He was on his feet now and he looked angry again. Like he wanted to hurt someone. He punched the wall hard and I could have sworn he left a dent in it, but I wasn't sure.

All I knew at that moment was that he was right: He got it. His situation was completely different from mine – his brother was alive, breathing and my mother was dead and buried in a land plot in Connecticut. And, yet, somehow he felt the same as me, even if it was a million times less so for him. He still got it.

For a second, I thought about hugging him, but before I even had time to think about it, Raphael was walking away from me. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't talk about this anymore. I need to go to bed."

"Yeah, okay," I said as I watched him walk away. "Good night."

He said nothing in response.

* * *

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of my cell phone ringing. I heard the sounds of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and April all groaning in their sleep as the shrill sound cut through the air. They all had decided to camp out in the living room with me the night before.

"Answer it, Dani," Leonardo said, still half-asleep.

"Okay, okay," I said as I rolled off the couch and landed on the cool concrete floor. "Ow."

Now, I was awake.

I grabbed my cellphone off the floor as the name "Dad" flashed across the screen. "Hello – Dad?"

"Actually, it's me." I recognized Camille's horrible sweet voice immediately.

"Oh, hi." I wiped some sleep out of my eyes.

"Sweetie," Camille said, "where are you?"

In an underground sewer lair with four mutant turtles, a talking rat, and a human girl.

The others were starting to get up now and they all looked at me with varying expressions confused interest. The only who was still asleep was Raphael. He slept like a rock.

I looked away from them. "I'm at my friend's house, remember?" I said. "For the sleepover?"

"Right," Camille said. I could hear her smiling. "Well, I just wanted to let you know that, thanks to you, your father and I had to reschedule our appointments to look at save-the-dates. We have to wait until next weekend now."

Thanks to me – what I had done?

I frowned. "I'm sorry. How come?"

Camille laughed. "Because, sweetie, we have to go apartment hunting because we're being evicted, remember?"

No, not really, honestly. I had completely forgotten about that. "Oh," I said uncertain of what else to say. "I'm sorry?"

Camille's voice sounded sweeter than ever now. "You had better be, you snarky little slut. Just wait until you come home – you are dead." She hung up on me.

I clicked the phone off and turned to look at the others, whose expressions ranged from concerned to slightly frightened. "You guys heard every word of that, didn't you?" I asked them.

"Pretty much," Leonardo said.

Michelangelo smiled a strained smile at me. "She seemed nice."

"Right," I said, getting to my feet. "Well, since I woke everyone up, I'll go make breakfast." I started walking to the kitchen.

"Hold on," Donatello said as he and the others followed after me. "First, she smashes my T-phone and now, she's threatening you and calling you names."

I pulled open the fridge. There weren't really a whole lot of options, except for some eggs and leftover pizza. I grabbed the eggs. "She didn't threaten me," I said, setting the eggs on the counter. "And, yeah, we fight a lot, so sometimes names get thrown around."

"She said and I quote, 'You are dead,'" April said, making air-quotes with her fingers. "That sounded like a threat to me."

"Me too," Leonardo said as Donnie and Mikey nodded in the background. "And I've been threatened _a lot_."

I searched the cupboards until I found a frying pan and spatula. I set them on the pan on the stove and began cracking eggs open a little harder than I should have. "She just meant that I'm going to be grounded," I said as egg splattered on the counter. "That's how parents tell their kids they're grounded."

"Yeah," Donatello said, "in horror movies."

I glared at him over my shoulder.

"Besides," Michelangelo said, "I thought your mom was dead."

"She is," I said. I could hear myself getting angry. "Camille is my dad's girlfriend, but they just got engaged, so she does have some control over me."

"You never told us they were engaged," Leonardo said, sitting down at the table.

That's because I've been trying not to think about it.

It was true. Aside from today, I had tried to avoid thinking about the fact that Dad and Camille were engaged and their horrendous engagement party as much as possible.

"Yeah," Donatello said, nodding. "When Raph and I were over there the other night, you didn't mention it then, either."

I spun around to face them. "Mention what?" I spat at them. "How my mom just died and my dad chose just now to get to engaged because my feelings aren't important to him and he obviously didn't respect my mother enough to even think about waiting a reasonable amount of time, and I can't point out any of this because him and his girlfriend are both completely psychotic?!"

The four of them sat, staring at me in shock. I stood in front of them, staring and breathing heavily, shaking with anger. I had told them too much. Would they figure it out?

Had they already?

I set the eggs down silently and grabbed my bag off the floor. "I'm going to take a shower," I said as I walked out of the kitchen.

* * *

After I spent half an hour taking a shower and another half an hour replacing the Band-Aids that had been washed off by the water, I went out to the living room. No one was there, but I could hear sounds coming from the training room. I wandered over to it silently. Everyone was inside, sparring, including Raphael who had woken up sometime during my shower. April was with Mikey, Donnie was with Leo, and Raphael was on his own with the attack dummy.

What really caught my attention, though, was that a second set of sliding doors that I had originally thought was a wall had been opened to reveal a room I never knew existed before. I wondered what was in there.

"Dani!"

I looked up to see Leonardo walking over to me.

So much for training, huh?

"Are you okay?" Leonardo said, sheathing his swords. He nodded at the room I had been staring at. "That's Splinter's room."

Oh, well, that explained a lot.

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to –"

"Don't even worry about it," Leonardo said, silencing me. "It's kind of our fault. We shouldn't have pried, especially me. I'm the leader. I should known better. I'm sorry."

Just then there was a scream and Donatello landed at our feet, groaning.

I couldn't help laughing. "What happened to you?" I asked him.

"Ask Raph," Donatello said, getting to his feet. He turned to Leo. "I asked you not to make me fight him."

"You shouldn't have made him mad," Leonardo told him, laughing.

Good advice. Probably useless, but good, nonetheless.

"Oh, right," Donatello said, nodding. "Uh-huh. I see how it is – he's allowed to make fun of me and say whatever he wants about me, but if I say even one word about – " He fell silent as a sai flew threw the air and collided with the sliding door right behind him where it hung there, stuck as it pierced the thin paper the door was made of.

Would there ever be a day when I could come to this place and _not_ be afraid for my life?

"Pretty much, yeah," Leonardo said as we all stared at the sai.

"Anything else you'd like to talk about, Donnie?" Raphael said as he walked past us and pulled the sai out of the door.

"Nope," Donatello said, smiling uneasily at him. "Nope, I'm all good."

"Glad to hear it," Raphael said, walking back over to the attack. He smiled at me. "Morning, Dani."

He was actually being nice. Sort of.

I wondered vaguely if it had anything to do with last night.

I waved back at him uncertainly. "Good morning."

He went back to beating up the attack dummy.

"So," I said, turning back to Donnie and Leo. "It's like I said, I'm really sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to blow up like that."

Donatello scoffed playfully. "It's cool. Don't worry about it – what your dad is doing is pretty disrespectful. I'd be upset, too."

"Anyone would be," Leonardo said, nodding.

Anyone with a heart, anyway, which didn't include Dad.

I nodded and started to walk away from them, facing backwards. "I should let you guys get back to your training, and I need to finish my homework."

"No problem," Leonardo said. "Just let us know if you need anything."

I sighed as I turned and continued on my way back to the kitchen where my bag was. What I really needed was for people to stop bringing Dad and Camille. The last thing I wanted to think about right now was their wedding and how Camille would take it out on me if even one little thing went wrong. I couldn't wait to see what she had planned for me when I got home – more broken glass, perhaps?

Maybe she would smash the new china Dad had just bought for her.

I ended up dragging my homework with me back to the training room just so I wouldn't have to be alone. The noise everyone made while sparring and practicing actually helped to keep me calm rather than distract me, and I ended up finishing my homework sooner than I had expected. And I didn't even need to ask Donatello for help.

I put my algebra book back inside my bag and fished around inside until I found a pair of earbuds I hadn't used in weeks. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and plugged the earbuds into the phone and accessed my music app. I bobbed my head in time to the music as I watched the others continue their training and pretended I was watching a ninjutsu/mutant-themed music video. It almost made what they were doing interesting.

The music video thing worked for a few minutes until the app decided it was time to play some Taylor Swift songs and, well, it was just weird watching Mikey and Leo fight each other to the tune of "Love Story". I decided to play a game on my phone instead. Maybe ping-pong or something. I found the game and started playing it, but as soon as I did, a small metal object landed on the ground beside me.

It was a shuriken.

I picked it up silently and looked up to see Raphael, walking over to me. "You know, if you have to be in here while we're training," he said, snatching the shuriken from me, "the least you could do is watch, especially if you aren't doing anything important."

Well, it was nice to see that his good mood had finally worn off. That meant he was back to normal.

The others paused in their training.

"Yeah, I got to say," Michelangelo said, "I'm a little hurt, Dani – humans usually love to watch us train and you just sit there, looking bored and playing video games."

Donatello frowned, nodding. "It is a little rude, Dani."

I smiled at them. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm not trying to be rude. I'm just not all that into sports."

Mostly because I sucked at them, but let's not get into that.

"Ninjutsu is more than just a sport, Dani," Leonardo said, frowning. "It's an ancient Japanese art –"

"Practiced for hundreds of years and revered for it's techniques," I said, nodding. "I know. We went over that last time and you guys are amazing at it. I'm just not really interested in it."

"Well, have you ever tried it?" April asked me, fanning herself with her tessan.

I looked at her and shrugged. "I took tai chi when I lived with my mom. That's sort of a martial art, right?"

Michelangelo face-palmed as the others exchanged unreadable glances.

"Look," Raphael said, "if you took tai chi, then you already know martial arts."

"I do?" I asked him.

"Yes," Raphael growled at me. "You just don't know how to use it defensively. That means that if you ever decided to take up something, like, karate or whatever it would be easier for you to pick up because you already know a form of martial arts."

Somehow, I doubted that.

I nodded. "Right except I don't plan on taking up anything like karate."

"Wait a second," Leonardo said, looking at me with raised eyebrows. "You're telling me that there's about an eighty-percent chance that you've got that Luke guy from the Purple Dragons after you, his cronies, and potentially all of our enemies after you and you haven't even considered learning about how to defend yourself?"

He had a good point.

"Well," I said, "I've been kind of preoccupied. I mean –"

"Just come here!" Raphael said, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me to my feet.

He dragged me into the center of the training room and all the others moved off the platform quickly. Splinter came out of his room and stood in the doorway of it. He looked interested, amused, and a little bit irritated.

Raphael thrust the shuriken he had thrown at me before into my hand. "Throw this at that." He grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, so that I was facing the attack dummy. "Aim for the head."

I looked from him to the dummy and back again. I could feel everyone staring at me. "I'm not sure I want to do this," I said, and every trace of amusement from earlier was gone from my voice. I sounded scared now.

Raphael's expression softened, but only slightly. "We're not going to be there to protect you all the time," he told me. "You've got to know how to do something."

I frowned. "But if Camille finds –"

"She won't find out," Raphael assured me. "Now, just throw it."

He was kind of cute when he was pushy. Whoa! Wait a minute – did _I _just think that? About Raph – a turtle?!

I tried to ignore the argument I was having with myself inside my head. I held the shuriken in my hand the way I imagined I would hold a gun.

Raphael shook his head. "Nope," he said. "Like this." He grabbed my hand and situated my fingers, so that I was holding the shuriken between my thumb and forefinger. "Now, aim for the head, snap back with your elbow, and throw." He retreated backwards a few feet.

I tried my best to do as he said. I aimed for the head, snapped back with my elbow, and released the shuriken, but I missed. Instead of it hitting the head like it was supposed to, the shuriken flew through the air and hit the dummy in the chest. But in the background, I could hear the others cheering for me and congratulating me. I didn't understand why, though.

I hadn't done it right. That meant I had failed, didn't it?

"You did great, Dani," Raphael said, clapping me on the back.

"Yes, Daniella," Splinter said, walking over to me. "You have done quite well for someone with so little knowledge of ninjutsu."

I looked at them both with raised eyebrows. "I did?" I asked them.

"_Hai_," Splinter said, smiling. "The fact that you were even able to hit the dummy was an accomplishment for you. If you wish to continue training, I would be more than willing to take you on as a pupil and I'm sure Raphael would have no qualms about assisting you in your training." He smiled at Raph.

"None of us would," Leonardo said, laughing. "Raph is right. You did a great job for a beginner."

"Yeah, you were awesome," Michelangelo agreed.

"And," Donatello said, "if you were to train under Master Splinter, then we would have two kunoichi on our team. I mean, of course, April would be your senior since she's obviously way better and more experienced than you, but still, you could be real asset to our team." He flashed a smile at April.

A real asset to their team? Was he serious – I had hit a motionless dummy with one shuriken. I had good hand-eye-coordination. No big deal. Why was everyone so excited?

"Thanks, you guys," I said, forcing myself to smile.

As much as I knew they were right and that I had to learn to defend myself, I wasn't sure if this was something I wanted to do. I mean, what would happen when they all realized I didn't need them to look out for me anymore?

Would they go away forever – did I want them to?

I felt my smile falter. I felt so confused. There was so much happening with my life lately and now there was this. I didn't know what to do.

A/N: Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up. It was just really hard for me to write because there's so much happening in it. I hope you enjoyed it :)


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.

6

I lay under a thin blanket with April beside me on the cool concrete floor of the lair. Splinter was in his chair, watching the beyond ancient black-and-white Japanese movie that had just come on, _The Seven Ninja_. The turtles were off doing their own thing. Leo was meditating, Donnie was in his lab, Mikey was...Doing whatever it was that Mikey did. And Raph was in the kitchen, talking to Spike, pretending none of us knew.

Which we did. Although for some reason, I couldn't help but the get feeling that I specifically wasn't supposed to know. Probably because I was an outsider and _wasn't _supposed to know.

"Booyakasha!"

I sat up and looked around to see what was happening only to be hit in the face with a bright orange water balloon. It exploded upon contact and water flooded my mouth and nose, soaking my hair and covering the floor.

"Wha –?" April said, sitting up only to be silenced as a second water balloon hit her in the face.

"Michel –" I said only to be cut off by the raucous laughter that erupted from Raphael.

Michelangelo flipped through the air and landed in front of April and I, blocking the television with his victory dance. "Oh, yeah!" he sang as he danced. "Dr. Prankenstein has officially pranked everyone in the lair!"

"Nice one!" Raphael called from the kitchen in between bouts of laughter.

Leonardo had paused his meditation to see what was going on and Donatello had come out of his lab to check things out. He rushed over to April quickly with a towel when he saw her on the floor, soaked.

April snatched the towel from him angrily. "Mikey –" she said.

"Aww, come on, April," Michelangelo said, flashing his puppy-dog eyes at her. "Don't be mad. It was just a little prank."

"A little prank?" I spat at him in disbelief. "We're both soaked!"

Don't kill him, don't kill him, don't kill him. Do _not _kill him. He helped save your life.

"Yeah, Mikey," Donatello said, glaring at his brother. "If you keep this up, you're going to make someone sick."

I rang my hair out with my hands. "Seriously, and if I get sick, I'm blaming you." I pointed at Michelangelo.

Mikey scoffed playfully. "Come on, Dani, after everything you've been through – your mom's suicide, getting bludgeoned by a two-by-four, and almost getting your head cut off by a deadly ninja weapon – I'm pretty sure you could live through a little cold."

Silence fell over the lair as we all stared at him. Even Raph had stopped laughing. I wasn't sure what had stunned me more – the fact that there was actually someone down here who was more insensitive than Raphael or the fact that the word bludgeon was even in Mikey's vocabulary.

"Michelangelo!" Splinter said finally, rapping his staff on the floor. "Ten flips now!"

Michelangelo frowned at him. "But why, sensei?" he said, all the amusement was gone from his voice. "What did I do?"

Donatello looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Really, Mikey, really?"

"I'm going to changed," I said, pushing myself to my feet. I grabbed my bag off the floor.

I had to get out of those clothes – it would give me something to do while I contemplated murdering Mikey.

I was half-way across the living room when I heard April say, "Hey, wait a sec, what's with all these...Band-Aids?"

Without thinking, I spun around and turned to see April, picking up a bloody Band-Aid out of a sopping wet pile on the floor with a look of disgust on her face.

Crap. They must have come off when –

"April," Leonardo said, walking over to us. "Where did you get those?"

Donatello turned to her hurriedly. "Yeah, you aren't hurt, are you?"

"I'm fine," April assured him. "I just found them on the floor."

I retreated away from the situation slowly as I began to edge my way over to the bathroom, bag in hand, until eventually I backed right into something.

Raphael's voice rang in my ears. "I think I know where she got 'em."

Before I could respond, he snatched my bag out of my hands, turned it upside, and emptied it out all over the floor. Dirty clothes, text books, my laptop, and – finally – a box of fifty count Band-Aids fell onto the floor lair. The Band-Aids fell out of the box and spilled out onto the floor along with a small roll of bandages and some peroxide wipes.

Raphael glared at me with narrowed eyes. "You got anything else in there you don't want us to know about?" he said. "Some razor blades, maybe?"

I could feel everyone staring at me, waiting for an answer, but I wasn't going to give them one. Not if I could help it. I knelt down and began hurriedly gathering up all of my belongings. I didn't care that they had already seen everything. If I could hide it all away at the bottom of my bag where I didn't need to look at it, it wouldn't matter.

I reached for the box of Band-Aids, but before I could reach it, Raph grabbed it off the floor and threw it across the room. "I'm getting real tired of you not answering me!" he snapped angrily.

I stared down at the floor where the box had been as my belongings spilled out of my arms, which were now shaking. I wasn't sure if it was from sadness or frustration or anger. Maybe it was from none of it because that was nothing compared to how disappointed I felt. How defeated.

They weren't supposed to know about this. It was my secret. My dirty little secret. They weren't supposed to know.

Raphael wasn't supposed to know it. Just like I wasn't supposed to know he talked to Spike.

"Dani?" Michelangelo said. He sounded a little bit afraid. "What's with all this stuff?"

I glared at him. "It's none of your business!" I snapped at him. "It's mine – it's personal!" I looked around at all of them, hoping that would be enough to get them to just drop it.

As if it'd be that easy.

Leonardo pushed past the others to stand in front of me and I felt trapped suddenly with him there and Raph behind me. I wanted to run, but I couldn't. They had me cornered. What would they ask?

What would I tell them?

Leo knelt down in front of me, his expression a mixture of sympathy, anger, and frustration. "What's going on, Dani?" he asked me, and I knew from his voice that he wanted answers. "Do you hurt yourself – do you cut?"

I looked away from him silently.

"That ain't what happened," Raphael said before I could even about answering.

I looked up at him. "How would you know?"

"Tch," Raphael scoffed. "Didn't you know who called you that night?"

Wait, what night? The night with Camille and the glass?

That's right. Someone had called. I never checked to see who it was.

I stared at him, half-angrily, half-confused. I couldn't tell which emotion was stronger. "Why were you calling me?"

Raphael glared down at me or at least I thought it was at me. It took me a second to realize he staring at something else just over my shoulder, something I couldn't see. "You wouldn't tell me what was going on," he said and a tiny smirk crept across his lips. "So I decided to figure it out for myself. I waited out on the balcony outside your bedroom. The window was wide open, but the door to your room was closed. I could hear fine, though. I was there for about an hour after someone came home and started smashing shit. Sounded like someone breaking dishes or something." He locked his eyes on mine. "Was that you?"

He didn't know. Or did he?

I couldn't tell. I didn't know how much he had heard that day. He said he'd been able to hear fine, but what did that mean? With the way he was acting now, I just couldn't tell.

I decided to lie again – he would either catch me in it or he wouldn't, but what would happen if he did?

I turned my gaze to my fingernails. "I-I was mad because my family's being evicted and it was my fault. It was too much. I had just moved from Connecticut because my mom died and now, my dad and his girlfriend were going to be pissed me over something I had no control over. I went nuts and broke some dishes. Then I fell and got all cut up."

Would they believe me?

"Is that really what happened, Daniella?" Splinter said from his spot in his armchair.

I looked up at him and I could see hurt disappoint in his eyes. Splinter wasn't like his sons, somehow. He held this family together and he was willing to help me, an outsider, not because he felt obligated to, but because he wanted to. He had helped April, too, and the turtles when he had taken them in fifteen years ago. Would they even be alive without him?

Splinter was a good person. Not a good rat, but a good person.

I couldn't lie to him. "I –"

"You don't have a choice anymore," Raphael said, cutting me off. "We have to train you – you're not safe from anyone. Not even yourself."

I stared up at him. Was he saving me?

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get the words out, Raph turned and walked away. I sat silently, staring after him. I knew the others were speaking to me, but my mind drowned out everything they were saying. My own thoughts were too loud: Why would he save me?

* * *

I stepped out of the bathroom silently. I was wearing an over-sized T-shirt as a nightgown and the Band-Aids I'd replaced were fully visible now.  
There was no point in hiding it now, was there?

"Why is it so hard for you to tell us anything?"

I looked up to see April standing in front of me, looking angry. "Wha–?" I started to say, but she cut off me quickly.

"You know, the guys care about you." She glared at me. "We all do, and we're all really sorry that your mom died and that you're stuck in such a shitty situation with your dad, but that's still no excuse for how you treat everyone."

Everyone – everyone who?

They were the only ones I was lying to. Except for the kids at school. And the people at the ER that time. What was there to tell, though?

Nothing would change if I told. Nothing.

"April, I –" I said at last.

"Dani, we all want to be friends with you," April said. "Raph already thinks of you as his friend – do you think he'd have been sitting outside your window that night if he didn't?"

I looked down at my feet where the floor had turned black because of the water dripping from my hair. She had every right to be angry. They all did. I didn't understand why I was surprised by this. And yet I was."I want to be their friend – your friend, too, April."

"Then what is it, Dani?" April asked me. "Is it because we're different – is it because they're mutants?" She gestured to the living room where the turtles were.

I shook my head. "No."

I wasn't _that _horrible.

"Then what is it!?" April demanded angrily, her voice just below a shout.

Could the others hear us – were they watching us now, listening?

I looked up at April. I wanted to tell her that it was that I didn't have a choice. That nothing would change and things would probably only get worse, but I couldn't. I couldn't. I wanted to, but I couldn't. So instead I said simply, "I don't know."

April glared at me, her expression a mixture of anger and disgust. There was no sympathy in her face. "Well, figure it out then," she spat at me. "Before you _really _hurt someone." She turned and stomped off silently.

* * *

The next morning, I lay on the couch silently. The lair was quiet and cold. Unlike the night before, the turtles and April had decided to sleep in their own rooms, so I was alone. I didn't know if this meant they were still mad at me. Not that they didn't deserve to be. April probably was and if she was, that would be fine.

_Bzz! Bzz! _

I reached out grabbed and my phone off the floor. I tapped the screen silently until I found the source of the noise. I had a text message. From Camille.

Oh, joy.

The message was short. There was only one sentence to read:

We found a place! -C.

"Place – as in an apartment? Well, that was fast."

I looked up to see Donatello and Raphael standing over me, craning their heads to read the message on my phone.

Didn't turtles need sleep?

Raphael scoffed. "And she didn't leave you an address or anything. What, are you just magically supposed to know where this place is?"

"Well, to be fair," Donatello said, "they probably aren't moving today."

I stared at them. I hadn't spoken to any of them ever since my little chat with April and they were weirdly cheerful, despite everything that had happened last night. Why weren't they mad?

"It's no big deal," I said, setting the phone back on the floor. "They'll just give me the address themselves when I get home."

Even though Camille would probably rather just leave me in the loft to fend for myself.

Raphael smirked. "You seem angry today," he said. "Good. You'll need it."

Correction. I wasn't angry. I was miserable.

And furious. With myself.

I raised my eyebrows at him. "For what?" I asked him.

"Trust me," Donatello said, laughing. "You don't want to know."

I looked at him and opened my mouth to respond, but before I could Raphael ripped the blanket off of me and threw it on floor. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me to my feet. "You're coming with me," he said, dragging me along with him to the training room.

* * *

The first step to learning ninjutsu was to learn the basic forms of it, which were known as _kata_. The first kata was called _taikyoku __– _whatever that meant_. _It was made up of twenty-two steps and I had to learn all of them. With Raphael as my teacher.

Sounds easy, right?

So, so, so wrong.

Raphael performed taikyoku for what must have been the hundredth time, counting out the steps as he went. Then he turned to me. "Your turn," he said simply.

I stared at him. I was panting heavily, covered in sweat, and, worst of all, wearing nothing but my night shirt from last night and my underwear. Part of me wanted to object, but I wasn't stupid. I had figured out what was going on hours ago after the others had marched in the training to come watch me being tortured. I was being punished.

One.

I counted in my head as I pushed myself into the first step of the kata.

Two.

"This is insane," I heard April say quietly to one of the others. "How has she not gotten it by now?"

Three.

"Bad posture," I heard Splinter tell her. "Poor breathing. Look at the way she moves. She's not focusing properly."

Four.

"Wrong!" Raphael grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out of the fifth step position of the kata roughly. "How the heck did you ever manage to make it through tai chi?" He pushed me in a way that should have been gentle, but I was so exhausted I fell on the floor.

I glared at him."It was a class at the Y!" I reminded him angrily. "And the instructors there are actually helpful. They aren't allowed to push people or yell in their faces like complete maniacs."

Not that I had any right to complain. I deserved to be punished.

"Actually, Dani," Donatello said from his spot beside Splinter, "compared to how he treats the rest of us, Raph has been going easy on you."

"Frightening, isn't it?" Michelangelo asked me.

"And, you know, I figured that after _three hours_, you would have actually figured out what you were doing wrong, but I guess you're too dumb to figure it out," Raphael said nonchalantly as I got to my feet.

I glared at him, trying to resist the urge to hit him.

"That is enough," Splinter said, walking over to us. He stood between Raph and me. "Daniella, you need to learn to focus on your movements. If you had been concentrating, you would have learned this kata by now – you're making it more difficult than it should be." He narrowed his eyes at me. "What is it that has you distracted?"

What had me distracted – what had me distracted?

Everything had me distracted. Life had me distracted, but mostly it was the fact that all of the people who had been there for me – who had saved me and promised to protect me were mad at me and there was nothing I could do about it because I couldn't be honest with them!?

Even Mom probably hated me right now. And I deserved it.

I looked away from Splinter. "It's nothing," I sighed. "I just didn't sleep well."

Splinter sighed. "Very well," he said. "You and Raphael may rest, but the rest of you must practice." He gestured to the other three turtles.

Finally.

Raphael turned on his heel and left silently. "Thank you, Splinter," I said as I watched him leave.

I turned and walked out of the room silently. As I was a leaving, April began to follow after me silently.

Great. Maybe she was here to yell at me again.

April smiled at me uneasily as we walked to the living room. "So," she said, "are you happy you get to go home today?"

I frowned at her.

Yes, because who doesn't enjoy living with an abusive psychopath?

"Right," April said, her smile faltering. "Stupid question."

I nodded as we sat down on the couch. "So what's up?"

And, please, do not say the ceiling.

April sighed and frowned at me. "It's nothing," she said. "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for exploding on you last night and that even though I was mad at you, I forgive you and I hope you accept my apology."

Weren't you supposed to ask for forgiveness?

"It's cool," I said, smiling. "I shouldn't have kept things from you guys. I deserved to get yelled at. Anyway, why did you decide to apologize?"

I probably deserved to be exiled from the sewer lair for lying so much.

April shook her head. "I've been under a lot of stress lately," she said. "I've been through a lot, you know. My dad was kidnapped and now, I'm living here, on the run from inter-dimensional aliens and a clan of ninja and their allies, but I still manage to keep calm. Mostly." She looked up at me sheepishly. "You've been through just as much – if not more – and you look like you're falling to pieces." She shrugged. "I guess that just made me feel bad that I yelled at you like that. Plus, after what Raph put you through today, I figured you'd been punished more than enough."

Did I hear her right?

I stared at her, my eyes wide and my anger forgotten. "I-I'm sorry," I said after a moment of silence. "Did you just say there are inter-dimensional aliens and an evil ninja clan after you?"

April nodded. "The aliens are called The Kraang. They're the ones who took my dad."

So _that's _what the Kraang were – why did I even bother being surprised? I was in a sewer with four talking turtles.

"And these things are in New York?" I asked April.

"Yeah," April said. "The Kraang have been kidnapping scientists like my dad from all over the city."

And to think, I had been worried about street gangs.

"See why learning to defend yourself is important?" I looked up to see Raphael come in the living room, carrying a plate of cold pizza. He sat down on the bean bag chair on the floor and took a bite out of his pizza as he looked at me. "The ninja clan is called The Foot and we're sort of at war with them. They're allied with the Purple Dragons and the Kraang. Plus, they've got mutants of their own on their side." Any sort of anger or hostility that he might have felt before was gone now. He wore a grim smile and his voice was filled with bitter amusement.

Oh, the Purple Dragons were allied with the evil ninja clan. Nice to know. Maybe I should just ask Camille to kill me herself when I get home. She probably wanted to already, so problem solved.

I stared at Raph silently for a moment, taking in everything he had said. Then I grabbed my phone off the floor and opened up the internet browser.

"I really don't think you're going to find anything about the Foot or anything on Google," April said, smiling at me.

I frowned as I typed away at the touch-screen. "That's not what I'm looking up." I actually hadn't even thought of looking that stuff up.

And why would I – it sounded weird enough already without whatever crazy stuff the internet might pull up.

Raphael finished the slice pizza he had eating. Then he pulled a sai off his belt and used it spear the last two slices. "What are you looking up then?" he asked me.

I looked at him in disgust.

He did realize he used those to stab people, right?

Raphael ignored me and continued eating in silence.

"If you don't mind us asking, that is," April added quickly as I went back to my phone.

I finished typing and hit the search button on my phone. "I'm looking up self-defense classes," I said as I waited for the results to load.

Raphael scoffed. "Now you're interested in self-defense classes?" he said. He looked at April. "We should have told her about this stuff a week ago."

I bookmarked a website with a list of the top ten best martial arts schools in NYC and sighed, rolling my eyes. "I'm not going to go enroll right away. I'm just looking it up for later." I grabbed my bag off the floor and shoved my phone in the side pocket. "It's not like it's a big deal or anything."

"Well, no, it isn't," April said, frowning, "but what do you mean by later?"

"Yeah," Raphael said, nodding. "What's the point of looking up the classes if you're not going to sign up for them?"

I thought the point was pretty obvious. To keep getting better at martial arts.

I opened my bag and dug through it. "You know, just after..." My voice trailed off as I pulled my last clean outfit out of the bag without looking at it.

"After what?" April prompted as I got to my feet.

I looked at the two of the them and tried to shrug like it was no big deal. Which it wasn't. "Just after I'm done here. I mean, once Splinter teaches me how to defend myself properly, I can go join a new school because then there won't really be a reason for me to come around here anymore." I locked eyes with Raphael as he stared at me. "Will there, Raph?"

I turned and walked away silently.

A/N: I just wanted to take this time to say thank you to all the people who have reviewed this fanfiction. Your reviews mean a lot to me and I really appreciate the support.  
Also, I just wanted to apologize for taking so long to post this chapter. A lot has happened in my life these past couple weeks. There's been a death in my family and a lot of things have changed for me, so I'm really just trying to cope and figure everything out.  
Sorry it took me so long to write and post. I hope you will forgive me.  
Thank you for waiting patiently 3


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